"clifto" wrote in message
...
Kurt Ullman wrote:
Just Wondering wrote:
Amendment II

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.


That's right, the right of THE PEOPLE (not the militia) to keep arms
shall
not
be infringed.

But the need for a well-regulated militia is what is stated first and
succinctly. You conveniently ignore that.

What you're ignoring is that the entire first part of that is commentary.
The actual meat of the amendment says simply and eloquently, "the right
of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The grammatical construction of the first part sounds stilted in today's
world, but translating it into modernese, it says "Because a
well-regulated
militia is necessary to the security of a free State..."

Not necessarily. Nominative absolute sentences are just as (un)common today
as they were in the latter part of the 18th century. Yes, I researched it,
around 20 years ago.

And the "because" is just one possible "in other words" for such a
nominative absolute. The accurate meaning of the others would produce an
awkward sentence -- which is why the nominative absolute is used from time
to time in literature. You will not see it used in legal documents today
because of the ambiguity.

I don't look this stuff up for fun, but if you doubt all this and want to
see some parallel examples, I'll dig out my grammar books. They have some
good ones.

--
Ed Huntress