"David G. Nagel" wrote in message
...


Ed Huntress wrote:

"willshak" wrote in message
...


Why is it that some believe that the US Constitution guarantees weapons
ownership?
Most of these people have never read the law, and those that have read
it, completely ignore the first clause of the sentence.
"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".
How many gun owners belong to a "well regulated militia"?


It's not a clause (except to a lawyer), because it contains no predicate.
It's a phrase, and the sentence is a type called "nominative absolute."
Nominative absolute sentences tell you nothing about the dependency of
the clause ("the right of the people..." etc.) upon the phrase. It may be
a dependency, or it may be incidental. Often it's a sufficient but not
necessary condition.

Nobody ever gets this right, so don't feel badly about it. And it
wouldn't be the first time the FFs wrote something that was intentionally
ambiguous. The whole purpose of the Bill of Rights was to get the
anti-federalists to calm down and ratify the Constitution. Nothing more,
nothing less.

Gunner does identify the source of the idea of our 2nd Amendment as a
"right," however, which is English common law.

--
Ed Huntress

Ed;

The Founding Fathers may have been unnecessarily ambigous in the phrasing
of the Second Amendment but the Resolution of Congress that became the 2ND
Amendment upon ratification by the states was NUMBER ONE on the list of
Resolutions passed by Congress and sent to the states.

I'm not sure what that means. Was it the shortest one? It seems like it must
have been the shortest.

--
Ed Huntress