Replies

I would put it differently. "Colorado Heroine MIGHT have been legally prevented ....." is closer, though not perfectly satisfactory. I'd I'd suggest that what you're after in parsing this is not the mood "subjunctive" but one (or more) of the various "conditional" tenses.

Consider

If she IS a security guard, she MAY be legally prevented ...
If she WERE a security guard, she MIGHT be legally prevented....
If she HAD BEEN a security guard, she MIGHT HAVE BEEN legally prevented ...

Then compare them to

If she IS a security guard, she is prevented ...
If she is in future (or 'if she becomes') a security guard, she will be prevented...
If she was a security guard, she was legally prevented

So the headline reflects, IMHO, two problems with modern US English, we don't know the sequence of tenses in conditional sentences, and we don't know the inflection of the verb "may".

IMHO, when language loses the ability to make distinctions, it loses something inmportant. There's an real difference between "She MAY not be able," and "She MIGHT no be able", but the uses of the tenses of "may" is vanishing, so we're having to find different ways to draw that distinction.

In this "headline", what we have is a hypothesis contrary to fact. Here's a restriction on registered security guards. She isn't a registered security guard, so it's not a restriction on how she can be armed. But if she HAD BEEN a registered security guard (which she, in fact, wasn't) then she MIGHT HAVE BEEN (Or, I wouldd htink, would certaianly have been) restricted from carrying her lovely Beretta 92-FS, which is one of the sweetest guns I own, though I prefer my sigp226, and, if I AM ombliged to carry a revolver, I usually carry my S&W 686P.

Don't get me going on grammar and "may" -- instant pedant, AND if I WERE to be disagreed with, I MIGHT draw one of my weapons, though I think I WOULD get more satisfaction from using my knife, up close and personal, than I WOULD from using a gun at some distance.

I trust I make myself obscure.

“In this “headline”, what we have is a hypothesis contrary to fact. Here’s a restriction on registered security guards. She isn’t a registered security guard, so it’s not a restriction on how she can be armed. But if she HAD BEEN a registered security guard (which she, in fact, wasn’t) then she MIGHT HAVE BEEN (Or, I wouldd htink, would certaianly have been) restricted from carrying her lovely Beretta 92-FS, which is one of the sweetest guns I own, though I prefer my sigp226, and, if I AM ombliged to carry a revolver, I usually carry my S&W 686P.”

I do not know the legal definition of “security guard” in the city ordnance. I used “may” because the ordnance may apply to her, though I think that unlikely.

I don’t claim that grammer is my strong suit, but I am willing to learn from those more learned than I.