I was doing unrelated research today and came across this interesting tidbit. If we look at a side by side comparison of our Constitution with the Confederate constitution, which among other abominations enshrines ‘Negro Slavery’ in four different clauses, makes any appropriation require 2/3’s of the House and Senate to approve, and boldly asserts the Constitution was endowed by ‘Almighty God’; it’s does get the second amendment right.
Ours:
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.
Theirs:
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.
Though there are no changes per se, Second Amendment scholars in the US have long argued over the significance of the punctuation in this clause. The CSA’s version gets rid of a few commas, which makes the language closer to what gun control advocates believe the amendment was supposed to say, namely that the right to keep and bear arms only exists if one belongs to a militia.
Interesting. I am really interested in why they made this change and if we made this change would it really make a big difference. I leave it to my fellow scholars and progressives to answer.
it’s as simple as correcting incorrect grammar or updating the grammar for the modern usage that had evolved. Only legal scholars could argue over the marks some recording secretary put on a handwritten page.
The U.S. Constitution’s clause with the first comma makes no sense. If the first comma were supposed to be there, you’d have “being necessary to the security of a free State” as a parenthetical element. That would require the sentence to continue with a verb for “A well regulated militia.” There is no such verb. The whole thing makes no sense at all unless you understand “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State” as imposing a condition for the rest of the sentence.
Makes me wonder: what the hell do they think the part about the “well regulated Militia” is in there for?
And there’s just no justification for that third comma at all under grammar as I know it. If the first comma justifies seeing the “well regulated Militia part” as severed and superfluous, I guess the third comma makes the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” totally separate from “shall not be infringed.” Problem solved. Somebody call Scalia.
…is to set apart “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” as an appositive simply restating what a well-regulated militia is. So the amendment could well boil down to (though this sounds a little awkward to modern ears), “A well-regulated militia shall not be infringed,” which supports the gun control position. I believe I have also read that the comma placement and usage is not even consistent among the original copies of the Constitution.
If that were so, you’d think they’d have the part about “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” before the part about “being necessary to the security of a free State.” The whole thing is awkward unless you read it the way the Confederates (who adopted the U.S. Amendment word-for-word but changed the punctuation) apparently did.