The ORIGINAL writing of the 2nd Amendment has three commas.
"A well regulated Militia(1), being necessary to the security of a free State(2), the right of the people to keep and bear arms(3), shall not be infringed." (Second Amendment to the Constitution.)
I'm not a scholar in English, but I seem to recall my teacher of many years ago saying that words between commas in a sentence should not change the meaning of the original sentence, only explain it better to a reader.
#1 is the basic intent of the sentence. All black letters.
#1 A well regulated Militia, shall not be infringed."
In #2 I retracted, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". Now the original meaning of the sentence is explained a little better than the original.
#2 A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed."
In #3 I retracted, "being necessary to the security of a free State". Now the original meaning of the sentence still is explained a little better than the original.
#3 A well regulated Militia, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
When "being necessary to the security of a free State" and "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" is included into the basic sentence, now we see the FULL meaning the Founders had when they wrote the complete sentence.
This is the gun control peoples writing of the 2nd. Note the ONE comma.
A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state(1), the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
They are insinuating that the the original sentence is "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" and that "the security of a free state" should be controlled by "A well-regulated militia. "
"the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is not infringed because only the Militia should have these arms, not the common citizen.
I know scholars have much deeper and clearer explanations than I do, but my explanation seems to help people understand the Founders intentions without having to read numerous pages.
Actually not. The copy now on display has three commas, but the original one sent from Congress to the printer and at least some of those sent to the states for ratification had only one. The one between the two phrases "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State," and "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.". It's a long sentence and if you speak it you may have a tendency to pause at the location of the other two commas, that's all they indicate, whereas the comma separating the two phrases does exactly that. The first (dependent) phrase is a sort of preamble, giving a reason "why", the second (independent) phrase tells "what". The dependent phrase does not restrict the independent phrase's command.
Until fairly recently (in terms of the time since the Bill of Rights was passed) the printed versions were the single comma one. The surplus commas were not put there by Congress, and were not voted on by Congress or the States, they were put there by the printer/transriber. See the SAF site and Talk,Politics,Gun FAQ
In any event, three commas or only one, the command is clear "the right of the people to keep and bear arms(,)shall not be infringed".