The 2nd Amendment: What a Difference a Comma Makes

[ericire12]

Here is a nice little read by pro gun advocate Gregory D. Lee

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.386/pub_detail.asp

What is it about "shall not" the anti-gun crowd doesn't understand?

For years they have argued that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to individual gun ownership, when the comma between the words "free state" and "the right" clearly shows that the framers of the Constitution were masters of brevity and were addressing two different issues they obviously did not want tampered with. Some might not like what the amendment says, but it doesn't change the fact that it says it.

Let's suppose there is a constitutional amendment that reads: A well regulated free government health care system, being necessary to the health of the people, the right of women to have abortions on demand, shall not be infringed. Would the typical anti-gun advocate suddenly understand what "shall not" and "infringe" mean? Would conservative pro-gunners argue that abortions could be regulated, denied or restricted at every level of government?

...the Second Amendment is the gun law of the land. Keeping and bearing arms shall not be infringed. Gun laws infringe that right. Any law contrary to that is obviously unconstitutional. The amendment doesn't say the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed except if you are a juvenile or a mental patient or live in the District of Columbia.

Even if all gun laws were declared unconstitutional, gun violence would probably not increase significantly because criminals have never followed gun laws, so why would they start now?

[Solus]

The Library of Congress web site has a copy of the Bill of  Rights with the 2nd Amendment having but one comma. 

It is said that it was ratified that way, but the copiers tended to add punctuation liberally (no pun intended....till after I typed it).

Visit this link to see the image  http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/llsl001.db&recNum=144


Further discussion of the punctuation of the 2nd Amendment and the link above may be found here 

http://www.guncite.com/second_amendment_commas.html 

[CurrieS103]

Grammar was never my strong suite but what is so hard about understanding what "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED"  means!