{"id":64,"date":"2004-03-14T20:59:00","date_gmt":"2004-03-14T20:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/almostclassical\/?p=64"},"modified":"2023-11-25T22:33:50","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T04:33:50","slug":"second-amendment-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/2004\/03\/14\/second-amendment-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Second Amendment Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Second Amendment to the United States Constitution\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener wikipedia\">Second Amendment<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Well-Regulated-Militia-Founding-Fathers-Origins\/dp\/0195147863%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dtameri-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0195147863\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"amazon noopener\">A well regulated Militia<\/a>, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Politicians omit and embellish facts. Court is not about &#8220;the <em>whole<\/em> truth&#8221; but rather only those facts a judge and the lawyers decide to present \u2014 and as they see fit to present them. The press is not \u201ctruthful\u201d (as in the <strong>full<\/strong> truth) but whatever facts and statements the reporters can squeeze into limited space and time, as influenced by biases. I know texts are never \u201cthe truth&#8221; nor is my reading of them likely a complete appreciation for what was written.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A well-regulated militia&#8230;&#8221; reads the Second Amendment. Does anyone know what &#8220;regulated&#8221; means? It&#8217;s not what most people assume it means. \u201cRegular\u201d meant well-prepared, or well-equipped, and ready at all times. A <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Standing army\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Standing_army\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener wikipedia\">standing army<\/a>. Hence, a &#8220;regular&#8221; army is better than a &#8220;guard&#8221; on-call. Regulated does not mean &#8220;governed&#8221; in all instances, just as &#8220;run&#8221; does not always mean something people in track meets do. &#8220;Regulated&#8221; can mean &#8220;well-prepared&#8221; or &#8220;well-maintained&#8221; or even &#8220;well-regarded&#8221; in eighteenth-century English.<\/p>\n<p>Although one group can insist the constitution applies to a &#8220;professional and regulated standing army,&#8221; another would point to the notion of a &#8220;well-equipped temporary brigade.&#8221; Militia meant &#8220;standing army&#8221; as often as &#8220;temporary corps&#8221; in the literature of the time.<\/p>\n<p>So, words mean too many things and result in work for lawyers and linguists, I suppose.<\/p>\n<p>What the Second Amendment &#8220;means&#8221; to me is shaped as much by my time (now) as it is by my politics. Words change in a living language.<\/p>\n<p>Looking back through history, the Second Amendment has evolved with political views. In the Old West, it wasn\u2019t uncommon for a local community to ban the public carrying of weapons. What changed? The firearms industry created a mythology of the safety and security offered by owning weapons. Marketing became reality, became a political ideology.<\/p>\n<p>Owning a weapon might be a Constitutional right, especially if we believe in limited infringement on the individual and the market. But can a right be construed as limited for the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Welfare\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Welfare\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener wikipedia\">public welfare<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>Can we infringe on the right to bear arms if the owner is unwilling to learn the ways of a \u201cwell-regulated militia\u201d volunteer? Can we infringe on the right at all, or is the last portion of the Amendment primary?<\/p>\n<p>These are questions with answers that might change with time. That\u2019s the nature of our system in which we now consider many punishments cruel and unusual that were accepted in the eighteenth century.<\/p>\n<p>See:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/wex\/second_amendment\">https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/wex\/second_amendment<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[amazon_link asins=&#8217;0393345831,1621575802,0062242725,082236123X&#8217; template=&#8217;ProductCarousel&#8217; store=&#8217;Tameri-20&#8242; marketplace=&#8217;US&#8217; link_id=&#8217;f03f9f62-f2a0-11e7-bc7b-35986d9cfc05&#8242;]<\/p>\n<p><small>Photo by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/22490717@N02\/2799822780\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">archer10 (Dennis) 127M Views<\/a> <a title=\"Attribution-ShareAlike License\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/almostclassical\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-inject\/images\/cc.png?ssl=1\" \/><\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Second Amendment: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1533,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":1,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37,8,43],"tags":[35,256,453,42],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law","category-politics","category-constitution","tag-gun-rights","tag-language","tag-negative-rights","tag-second-amendment","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2024\/03\/AC_Banner_Gray_1200x630.png?fit=1200%2C630&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfivL7-12","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1478,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/1478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}