Before looking at these words more closely, we should pause to focus on a few things that the Second Amendment does not say: |
1.. It emphatically does not say that it protects the right of the militia to keep and bear arms.
2. Nor does the Second Amendment say that the people’s right to arms is sufficient to establish a well regulated militia, or that a well regulated militia is sufficient for the security of a free state.
3. Nor does the Second Amendment say that the right of the people to keep and bears arms is protected only to the extent that such a right fosters a well regulated militia or the security of a free state.
As these observations suggest, the grammar of the Second Amendment emphasizes the indefiniteness of the relation between the introductory participial phrase and the main clause. If you parse the Amendment, it quickly becomes obvious that the first half of the sentence is an absolute phrase (or ablative absolute) that does not modify or limit any word in the main clause. The usual function of absolute phrases is to convey information about the circumstances surrounding the statement in the main clause, such as its cause. For example: “The teacher being ill, class was cancelled.”
The importance of this can be illustrated with a simple example.
Suppose the Constitution provided:
A well educated Electorate, being necessary to self-governance in a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed.13
This provision, which is grammatically identical to the Second Amendment, obviously means the following: because a well educated electorate is necessary to the health of a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed. The sentence does not say, imply, or even suggest that only registered voters have a right to books. Nor does the sentence say, imply, or even suggest that the right to books may be exercised only by state employees. Nor does the lack of identity between the electorate and the people create some kind of grammatical or linguistic tension within the sentence. It is perfectly reasonable for a constitution to give everyone a right to books as a means of fostering a well educated electorate. The goal might or might not be reached, and it could have been pursued by numerous other means. The creation of a general individual right, moreover, would certainly have other effects besides its impact on the electorate’s If the grammatically limiting language of the Patent and Copyright Clause does not in fact limit the power granted by that clause, the prefatory language of the Second Amendment---- which does not serve a limiting function grammatically---- cannot possibly limit the scope of the right in the amendment’s operative clause. A Primer on the Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms 6 Virginia Institute for Public Policy educational level. And lots of legitimate questions could be raised about the scope of the right to books. But none of this offers the slightest reason to be mystified by the basic meaning of the sentence.
The Second Amendment is no different. Modern readers may have difficulty in seeing how a general right of individuals to keep and bear arms could contribute to a well regulated militia and to the security of a free state, and we shall explore that question in more detail below. But the text of the Second Amendment offers not the slightest warrant for presupposing that the answer to the question is that its framers were semi-literate fools who meant to say something like “The states shall have the right to maintain independent military forces for use against the federal government.”