As usual in recent years, the actual intention of the second amendment is being called into question. This is one particular debate I am not strongly emotionally attached to. I have owned a single gun (a .22) for a few years, firing it a total of two times. It was a Christmas gift from my second stepfather, but as with all of his rules, the restrictions placed on it were too draconian and therefore constricted my interest in it to nil. I enjoy firing weapons at a firing range, but I’ve only done that once. Also, I don’t hunt and find the actual act of taking a life repulsive. I say this to state the fact that I stand to lose nothing in terms of my personal life if guns were banned.
The second amendment of the Constitution of the United States:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
In an amicus brief filed for District of Columbia vs. Heller [via], three linguists weigh in on the language of 18th Century America as it applies to the second amendment. The case involves a handgun ban in the District of Columbia that was struck down by a federal appeals court on the basis of the second amendment. They intrepret the act of bearing arms to mean using a gun for the purpose of personal use (protection, hunting game). The amicus brief states that the phrase bear arms is idiomatic and always referred to the act of serving as a soldier, engaging in military service, or fighting. The interpretation by the DC court of appeals to allow personal use derives from several usages from that era where the idiom was broken. When the idiom was broken, there was additional modifying language. In the case of the second amendment, the presence of the absolute clause “A well regulated Militia” is further support for its use in the standard idiomatic sense (military service) versus the adorned sense (personal use).
Since I have neither the time, resources, nor the skill to actually research the opposing viewpoint here, I will assume they are at least 50% correct. I strongly suspect that another three linguists could easily be found who support the opposing viewpoint, since I have never heard of anything in the field of linguistics that didn’t result in long, heated debates between linguists. However, I like the interpretation of the phrase to bear arms as an idiom whose meaning cannot be inferred by examining the meaning of the individual words. For example, the meaning of the idiom the shit hit the fan cannot be inferred from the literal meaning of “feces making contact with a rotating blade whose purpose is driving air.” So if the phrase is idiomatic, then bearing arms cannot be interpreted as “carrying weapons” and certainly not as “having the upper appendages of the genus Ursus.” This is the case made by the amica curiae who filed the brief. They also address several other issues, and it’s surprisingly easy to read for a legal document, so I recommend checking it out if you’re curious.
That said, I have also always appreciated the interpretation of the intent of the second amendment as a safeguard against tyrants. An armed populace cannot be oppressed. Or at least, it makes it more dangerous to do so. However, I find it difficult to argue against the fact that an armed populace is not “a well regulated militia” and so the argument for an armed populace does not hold water.
My final observation is to wonder what the hell were the Framers thinking when they wrote this? Did they really need to constitutionally protect the right for the military to have weapons? Were they worried that a movement would sweep this new America to arm our soldiers with cream pies? If we allow ourselves to assume they indeed were not fending off legions of cream-pie carrying soldiers of the Republic (reductio ad absurdum), then we must conclude there was another intention.
What was it?
“Did they really need to constitutionally protect the right for the military to have weapons?”
Well, I think the answer lies in the fact that at the time the US did not have a standing professional military. Rather, when a military was called for to defend the nation against aggression, local volunteer militias were organized together into larger groups. These militia volunteers would naturally be composed of people who owned weapons that they could use or lend.
So I think the 2nd amendment is probably intended to allow people to keep weapons so as to form militias when the country needed to defend itself – not so they can get their jollies from killing animals.
It would have been nice if the young government had stuck to this idea of militias and national DEFENSE rather than building a standing Federal army that would later be used for aggression and even the oppression of its own citizens (as seen at various times when the military were called in to break strikes).
I think if you are a linguist looking for key words and phrases one might focus on a phrase used many times in the Bill of Rights… that being “the people” . The second amendment states that”the right of the people to keep nd bear arms shall not be infringed”. There are many rights of “the people” described in the Bill of Rights, and in no other amendment is “the people” broadly defined as “the military: The question posed is a good one… It would make very little sense for the Framers to make an amendment ensuring that the right of a governmentl military to keep and bear arms id protected. During the period, and many times since, the word militia is to describe all able bodied citizens, There is ample reference to this throughout history, as well as the individual supporting remarks of the Framers and those that participated in the construction of the Bill of Rights. Just a little research beyond this page will confirm. And that is why citizens are still able to keep nd bear arms individully today, despite numerous attempts to re-write the intent of the 2nd Ammendment.