[djf]

An oldie but a goody!

[Congressman Billybob]

This is a very interesting article. A good bit of one Dissent in the Heller case is devoted to a brief filed by an association of "Professors of Linguistics," who argue the exact opposite of the conclusions in your posted article. But, based on who filed amicus briefs on both sides in this case, I think those professors were prostituting their "linguistic" expertise to their "political" in-expertise.

Congressman Billybob

Latest article, "Beyond Guns: The Deeper Meaning of Heller"

[djf]

BTW, pretty soon about 73 people who have nothing better to do with their lives will show up and say “Already been posted!!” “yur wastin my time!!”... blah blah yada yada.

Ignore them. That gets their goat the most!

[mamelukesabre]

I'm glad you posted this. I've never read it, or if I have, I've forgotten it.

ONe thing about the language experts opinion that confuses me is his interpretation of the phrase “well-regulated”.

It's always been my belief that that phrase meant something completely different a couple hundred years ago. I thought well-regulated meant approximately “to run like clockwork”. Back in those days, clocks were hand built and one that kept accurate time was described as being “well-regulated”...which to me means an accurate, precise, and perfect machine. Applying this phrase to the description of a militia makes perfect sense to me. The best military of the times(think of the british redcoats) were well trained “machines” that marched, reloaded, fired in unison. Their survival depended on robot like precision and perfect, intantaneous execution of commands.

[BufordP]

For me this is the single best article I've ever read concerning the 2nd Amendment. I've had it on my links page for ages. It's permanently archived at the Constitution.org website.

Dave Kopel on National Review has a great article, Words of Freedom (May 16, 2001) that touches on the Schulman article as well.