Posted on 06/06/2015 8:50:57 AM PDT by stevie_d_64
A new Pew Research Center report states that 52 percent of Americans support gun rights, the highest percentage in the last two decades. Yet the gun rights that they believe are guaranteed by law may very well be an illusion..
That's because we have allowed lawyers instead of language professionals to interpret the Constitution of the United States.
Ask any high school English teacher to parse the Second Amendment, and they will say that it does not prohibit common-sense restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns, in spite of the National Rifle Association's claim to the contrary. The proof lies in the amendment's exact language "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."
Literally, it means that the American people will retain the right to carry weapons as members of a state militia in order to safeguard their freedom.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
“A well regulated press being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to speak and write shall not be infringed.”
This article proves that we need some common sense reform in the spoken and written press.
“High school English teachers” are already a sort of suspect group, in that they would almost universally have a built-in bias AGAINST guns, not the least of which would be, “No guns in MY classroom!” That, and they are, almost to an individual, very liberal in their political stance.
Sad to say, that prohibition is probably broken daily in hundreds of venues, by underage carriers in illegal possession of a sidearm, brought with the intention of imposing will against OTHER students, most of whom are unarmed, or authority figures of all kinds.
And “commonsense” has become a code word and dog whistle for the left. It means “ram it down their throats, no dissent allowed”.
Ask any liberal government school union teacher and they would parse it to mean teacher pensions need to be doubled.
Ha, classic...falls under the category ‘wish I’d said that’...
So this person is advocating that Constitutional Law be decided by elementary school English teachers and not constitutional lawyers?
That sounds like the reasoning of someone who has lost an argument.
Can’t wait to see this author point out that the ObamaCare law “clearly writes in english” that the Federal Government may not provide subsidies.
I’ve spent more than just a bit of time researching Col. McCormick. We’re he alive today he’d fire the lot of them.
L
(a) The militia shall be composed of all ablebodied inhabitants of the state who are or have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States; and no person because of religious creed or opinion shall be exempted from military duty except upon conditions provided by law.
So at least in Florida we are all militia members.
The professor is simply lying. Here is the second amendment meaning from a foremost expert on the English language. I will shortcut for those who do not wish to read the whole article. It means just what we have always thought it means.
Here is the definitive analysis of the second amendment as a sentence in English, by Professor Roy Copperud.
“He’s on the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and Merriam Webster’s Usage Dictionary frequently cites him as an expert. Copperud’s fifth book on usage, American Usage and Style: The Consensus, has been in continuous print from Van Nostrand Reinhold since 1981, and is the winner of the Association of American Publisher’s Humanities Award.”
A quote from the analysis:
[Schulman:] (1) Can the sentence be interpreted to grant the right to keep and bear arms solely to a well-regulated militia?
[Copperud:] (1) The sentence does not restrict the right to keep and bear arms, nor does it state or imply possession of the right elsewhere or by others than the people; it simply makes a positive statement with respect to a right of the people.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2967854/posts
Literally, leftists are control freaks. Literally.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia.
They try this pretty regularly with a modern English translation of a 200 year old text and come up with the same stupid crap every time.
It used to be that the libs would just throw this argument out at random, but now they’re using a bunch of wiffledick ‘English Professors’ who read 200+ year old English as if it’s modern and pretending that the same argument hasn’t failed before.
Language is a product of the culture of the time, not something separate that can be understood without the culture it came from.
It’s like an upper-class European Spanish speaker trying to figure out what a Mexican just said: some of the words sound the same but have different meanings and context.
I’d like to take one of these clowns up to the shooting range and watch him wet himself when the first gun goes ‘bang’. One round of .357 mag would probably have him sitting in a corner whimpering.
Same is true today. "The militia" in the broadest sense is the set of citizens capable of bearing arms. By federal law ...
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard
Back in the 70s, the Chicago teachers union was on strike. I was watching an interview with one of the picketers. The interviewer asked her, "What do you do at the school"? She stated, "I teaches English".
So much for Chicago English teachers!
Whebn the 2nd amendment was drawn, All males, 16 to 60 or some such age were the militia and expected to provide their own firearm of a common pattern.
the poor author cannot make the very obvious distinction between an 18th century state militia and a modern day state National Guard...upon which his entire thesis erroneously turns...
It means nothing of the sort.
Uh...hello....
Layers ARE language professionals.
The 2A is a stand alone amendment, professor. It doesn’t require anyone’s revision, the NRA’s included.
Actually, a literal reading of the 2nd amendment says that since an armed body of citizens (a militia) is necessary to preserve freedom, the average citizens must be armed. Therefore, the right to be armed shall not be infringed.
There are several versions of the Amendment,
some with one, two or three commas, possibly
some with the word “state” not capitalized.
If “state” not capitalized the reference to Statehood
is misplaced and refers to a state of freedom.
In any event the content and meaning of the principle
phrase is unchanged.
Shall not be INFRINGED means exactly what it says.
For far too long we have allowed infringment and
our “rights” have been made hollow. Enough!
Do people have short memories or are they just plain stupid? This specious argument jumps out of the woodwork every time they realize that they have no support from the public. The writings of the people who wrote the amendment are clear about their belief that the people needed to be better armed than the government to prevent tyrants!
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