The Second Amendment: How Does It Work? Progressives Have No Idea

[Geee]

The Federalist:

I genuinely want to be done with defending the Second Amendment from the regular barrage of its historically illiterate and inept detractors—the people who say this amendment protects only the “right” of the “militia” to own weapons.

 

One friend and fellow gun rights activist said it’s best to just ignore such people, in the same way that you might ignore people who say triangles have four sides or that the Sun orbits the Earth. It is tempting to just stop engaging the dopes who simply refuse to consider basic, objective historical facts.

 

But I actually think this might be a bad strategy, as it may allow the debunked and nonsensical “militia” reading of the Second Amendment to gain ground. With a Hillary Clinton presidency and Supreme Court on the way, we need an American population that is historically knowledgeable. That means fighting back against the corruption of American knowledge.

 

Unsure About the Meaning of ‘Is’ Again

 

Anti-gun folks will cheerfully exploit (and in many cases encourage) the ignorance of the American body politic to get what they want. It is important to push back against that wherever and whenever possible. By way of example: at the Huffington Post this week, Daryl Sneath, a “recreational grammarian,” is trying very hard to take advantage of American historical ignorance:

 

One of those things [the Framers] knew about is the comma, the only purpose of which is clarity. Doubtless the writers were acutely aware of this grammatical truism (despite their apparent affinity for complex diction) when they drew their collective stylus southward (certainly aware too of that symbolic direction) making the little mark immediately following the phrase the right of the people to keep and bear arms. As such, the subject of the predicate shall not be infringed is clearly not the right of the people. No subject is ever separated from its predicate by a comma alone. Put more plainly, the principal clause (or declaration) of the whole amendment is this: A well regulated militia shall not be infringed. The middle bit modifies the main.