Posted on 11/20/2007 10:14:54 AM PST by ctdonath2
After a hiatus of 68 years, the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to rule on the meaning of the Second Amendment — the hotly contested part of the Constitution that guarantees “a right to keep and bear arms.” Not since 1939 has the Court heard a case directly testing the Amendment’s scope — and there is a debate about whether it actually decided anything in that earlier ruling. In a sense, the Court may well be writing on a clean slate if it, in the end, decides the ultimate question: does the Second Amendment guarantee an individual right to have a gun for private use, or does it only guarantee a collective right to have guns in an organized military force such as a state National Guard unit?
The city of Washington’s appeal (District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290) is expected to be heard in March — slightly more than a year after the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that the right is a personal one, at least to have a gun for self-defense in one’s own home.
The Justices chose to write out for themselves the question(s) they will undertake to answer. Both sides had urged the Court to hear the city’s case, but they had disagreed over how to frame the Second Amendment issue.
Here is the way the Court phrased the granted issue:
“Whether the following provisions — D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 — violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”
Woot here we go! Good or bad it’s about time they heard one of these cases.
We should all send them some monopoly money. :) Their major donors will be primarily leftist extremists who only look at the Constitution favorably when it benefits them.
(THanks to Pyro7480 for posting on the other thread)
Copyright (c) 1991 by The New Gun Week and Second Amendment Foundation. Informational reproduction of the entire article is hereby authorized provided the author, The New Gun Week and Second Amendment Foundation are credited. All other rights reserved.
THE UNABRIDGED SECOND AMENDMENT
by J. Neil Schulman
If you wanted to know all about the Big Bang, you’d ring up Carl Sagan, right? And if you wanted to know about desert warfare, the man to call would be Norman Schwartzkopf, no question about it. But who would you call if you wanted the top expert on American usage, to tell you the meaning of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution?
That was the question I asked Mr. A.C. Brocki, Editorial Coordinator of the Los Angeles Unified School District and formerly senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishers — who himself had been recommended to me as the foremost expert on English usage in the Los Angeles school system. Mr. Brocki told me to get in touch with Roy Copperud, a retired professor of journalism at the University of Southern California and the author of “American Usage and Style: The Consensus”.
A little research lent support to Brocki’s opinion of Professor Copperud’s expertise.
Roy Copperud was a newspaper writer on major dailies for over three decades before embarking on a distinguished seventeen-year career teaching journalism at USC. Since 1952, Copperud has been writing a column dealing with the professional aspects of journalism for “Editor and Publisher”, a weekly magazine focusing on the journalism field.
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 Publishers’ Humanities Award.
That sounds like an expert to me.
After a brief telephone call to Professor Copperud in which I introduced myself but did “not” give him any indication of why I was interested, I sent the following letter:
*** “July 26, 1991
“Dear Professor Copperud:
“I am writing you to ask you for your professional opinion as an expert in English usage, to analyze the text of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and extract the intent from the text.
“The text of the Second Amendment is, ‘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.’
“The debate over this amendment has been whether the first part of the sentence, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” is a restrictive clause or a subordinate clause, with respect to the independent clause containing the subject of the sentence, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
“I would request that your analysis of this sentence not take into consideration issues of political impact or public policy, but be restricted entirely to a linguistic analysis of its meaning and intent. Further, since your professional analysis will likely become part of litigation regarding the consequences of the Second Amendment, I ask that whatever analysis you make be a professional opinion that you would be willing to stand behind with your reputation, and even be willing to testify under oath to support, if necessary.”
My letter framed several questions about the text of the Second Amendment, then concluded:
“I realize that I am asking you to take on a major responsibility and task with this letter. I am doing so because, as a citizen, I believe it is vitally important to extract the actual meaning of the Second Amendment. While I ask that your analysis not be affected by the political importance of its results, I ask that you do this because of that importance.
“Sincerely,
“J. Neil Schulman”
***
After several more letters and phone calls, in which we discussed terms for his doing such an analysis, but in which we never discussed either of our opinions regarding the Second Amendment, gun control, or any other political subject, Professor Copperud sent me the following analysis (into which I’ve inserted my questions for the sake of clarity):
***
[Copperud:] The words “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,” contrary to the interpretation cited in your letter of July 26, 1991, constitute a present participle, rather than a clause. It is used as an adjective, modifying “militia,” which is followed by the main clause of the sentence (subject “the right,” verb “shall”). The right to keep and bear arms is asserted as essential for maintaining a militia.
In reply to your numbered questions:
[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.
[Schulman: (2) Is “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” “granted” by the words of the Second Amendment, or does the Second Amendment assume a preexisting right of the people to keep and bear arms, and merely state that such right “shall not be infringed”?;]
[Copperud:] (2) The right is not granted by the amendment; its existence is assumed. The thrust of the sentence is that the right shall be preserved inviolate for the sake of ensuring a militia.
[Schulman: (3) Is the right of the people to keep and bear arms conditioned upon whether or not a well-regulated militia is, in fact, necessary to the security of a free State, and if that condition is not existing, is the statement “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” null and void?;]
[Copperud:] (3) No such condition is expressed or implied. The right to keep and bear arms is not said by the amendment to depend on the existence of a militia. No condition is stated or implied as to the relation of the right to keep and bear arms and to the necessity of a well-regulated militia as requisite to the security of a free state. The right to keep and bear arms is deemed unconditional by the entire sentence.
[Schulman: (4) Does the clause “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” grant a right to the government to place conditions on the “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” or is such right deemed unconditional by the meaning of the entire sentence?;]
[Copperud:] (4) The right is assumed to exist and to be unconditional, as previously stated. It is invoked here specifically for the sake of the militia.
[Schulman: (5) Which of the following does the phrase “well-regulated militia” mean: “well-equipped,” “well-organized,” “well-drilled,” “well-educated,” or “subject to regulations of a superior authority”?]
[Copperud:] (5) The phrase means “subject to regulations of a superior authority”; this accords with the desire of the writers for civilian control over the military.
[Schulman: If at all possible, I would ask you to take into account the changed meanings of words, or usage, since that sentence was written two-hundred years ago, but not to take into account historical interpretations of the intents of the authors, unless those issues can be clearly separated.]
[Copperud:] To the best of my knowledge, there has been no change in the meaning of words or in usage that would affect the meaning of the amendment. If it were written today, it might be put: “Since a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.”
[Schulman: As a “scientific control” on this analysis, I would also appreciate it if you could compare your analysis of the text of the Second Amendment to the following sentence, “A well-schooled electorate, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed.”
My questions for the usage analysis of this sentence would be,
(1) Is the grammatical structure and usage of this sentence, and the way the words modify each other, identical to the Second Amendment’s sentence?; and
(2) Could this sentence be interpreted to restrict “the right of the people to keep and read Books” “only” to “a well-educated electorate” — for example, registered voters with a high-school diploma?]
[Copperud:] (1) Your “scientific control” sentence precisely parallels the amendment in grammatical structure.
(2) There is nothing in your sentence that either indicates or implies the possibility of a restricted interpretation.
***
Professor Copperud had only one additional comment, which he placed in his cover letter: “With well-known human curiosity, I made some speculative efforts to decide how the material might be used, but was unable to reach any conclusion.”
So now we have been told by one of the top experts on American usage what many knew all along: the Constitution of the United States unconditionally protects the people’s right to keep and bear arms, forbidding all government formed under the Constitution from abridging that right.
***************************************************************
I was looking at the “View” section of the LA Times from December 18, 1991 today — an article on James Michener which my wife Kate had saved for me to read — when the beginning of Jack Smith’s column caught my eye: “Roy Copperud had no sooner died the other day than I had occasion to consult his excellent book, ‘American Usage and Style: The Consensus.’”
Thus I learned of the death a few weeks ago of Roy Copperud, the retired USC professor whom I commissioned to do a grammatical analysis of the Second Amendment this past summer. (My article was published in the September 13th issue of “Gun Week”.) It seems to have been one of the last projects he worked on. It is certainly one of the most important.
Roy Copperud told me afterwards that he, personally, favored gun control, but his analysis of the Second Amendment made clear that its protections of the right of the people to keep and bear arms were unaffected by its reference to militia. This sort of intellectual and professional honesty is sorely lacking in public discourse today.
In my several letters and phone conversations with Professor Copperud, I found him to be a gentleman of the old school. The planet is a little poorer without him.
J. Neil Schulman December 27, 1991
——————————————— End of Article -———————————————————
It is codified in the State of Florida Constitution that Florida has an ORGANIZED militia -- which is the national guard and an UNORGANIZED MILITIA which is every other law abiding citizen with a gun. Both are subject to call up for genuine emergencies.
The last time the Florida unorganized militia was utilized was after Hurricane Andrew when neighborhoods came together to fend off looters. It was not unusual to see a guy with a slung AK-47 (semi) or AR-15 (semi) chatting with a cop on a street corner in Homestead right after the storm. Those guys stopped a lot of criminal activity and both the national guard and the cops knew it.
If the USSC tries to weasel out of the proper ruling by framing the holding in the narrow point of the above quoted question, one of the lawyers needs to bring up the existence of the unorganized militia in Florida. I'll bet other states have similar verbiage in their Constitutions.
Well said and AMEN!
Rather doubt it. They get free lifetime security details. Of course there is the other reason they won't have to comply: Some pigs are more equal than other pigs.
Holy crap, they’re doing it!
Game on!!
“Whether the following provisions — D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 — violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”
Thanks for finding this...
But, there is something bugging me about how this is worded here...
— Does the “code” violate the 2A rights of individuals not affiliated with any state-regulated militia???
My answer: Yes, and an individuals non-affiliation with any state-regulated agency has no bearing upon the individuals right to KEEP and BEAR arms in any capacity...
— “...but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”
My answer/analysis: I would have worded this differently...
...but those individuals who choose to KEEP handguns and other firearms in any functional condition in their homes, or in any other location, on or about their person, for self-defense or other lawful purposes, shall not be restricted or infringed in any manner.”
Thank you, I’m here all week! (and the crowd goes wild!)
I’m not burying or hiding anything...Whatever happens with this...Don’t need to...
Even if it goes our way, nothing will be changed or enforced any differently...
If it doesn’t go our way, there will be no way to change or enforce anything...
The emotional Jeenie had been let out a long time ago, and it’s going to be hard to get it back in the bottle...In any way shape or form...
I encourage everyone to do the same--jam their mailboxes with fake money!
As usual, SCOTUS tries to keep it narrow. Only 3 particular laws are at question, focusing entirely on individuals “keeping” arms at home for home use. Given the nature of the appeal, they have no reason - and no grounds - to expand it further.
The final verdict, however, may be broader.
I’m sure today’s closed-door meeting with the lawyers included warnings to shape up lest a broader verdict be rendered.
2008 will be a very interesting year...every adult citizen of Israel is required to keep & bear arms. Can someone tell me where Fred T stands on gun rights/control? I am for Hunter and nothing can change my mind.
The supreme court is not a lock in our favor...It could very easily go 6-3 against us because of the narrow premise/nature of the question...
Kennedy being the swing vote on this, and Roberts stating a while back something to the effect that its not very clear, and needs to be reviewed...
I don’t see a 5-4 in our favor more than it going 6-3 against...
But like I’ve said before, be careful what you wish for...
I hate to be such a negative nancy about this, but I’d rather not get my hopes up and be wrong than think this is a lock for us and lose...
I hope I am wrong...
But the narrow line this question rides doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy at all...
But don’t go out and start buying PVC and all sorts of long term storage stuff...Thats a waste of time and effort when you should be keeping the stuff close by...Yeah, it stinks, but we didn’t bring this on...Somebody believes this is the best time to do this...Part of me agrees, but part of me believes this is going to be teeth gnashing time for individual citizens in this country...
And if they want this to coincide with an General Election...So be it...
This is going to be a defining time in this country along with a bunch of other issues that are long overdue to be resolved...
And if the liberal/socialist movement in this country thinks its a good time to “git er dun”...
Either way, I am sure they are going to be surprised by the outcome, either way...
Also:
“The city of Washington’s appeal (District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290) is expected to be heard in March.”
How convenient...Just in time for the first primaries to be completed and the primaries vetting process to give us someone to rally behind...
Unfortunately with that, we may not be very happy with that outcome...
The SCOTUS is going to drop their opinion on this right into the lap of the candidates, and we are going to really see how smart we think we are in all of this...
I’m jut not getting my panties in a wad on this before its time too...hehehe
Its not like we can call the individual Associate Justices up and tell them what they should do...Even though that might be funny to think we could do...
Patience, observe, don’t let the pundits and other media idiots and “experts” regardless of network affiliation fill us all up with even the slightest speculation...
They don’t know squat!
And we still have our guns! They ain’t going anywhere, regardless!!!
By a "collective" right, what do you mean? Do you mean an individual right that is exercised collectively, not individually?
Folks if we lose at the SC and Hillary wins and the Dems still control congress its going to be gun control bills trying to be passed left and right. We better hope the court gives us a victory of some sort.
Fred’s good on 2A...
Hunter’s good on 2A...
If those two, or Huckabee ever get a ticket together for next year, we might be in good shape “Executively” speaking...;-)
Did you see how I wrote it up???
I wish that was what was up for review instead of that garbage!
No warm and fuzzies! hehehe
I read their phrasing of the question presented the same way.
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