Rick Stanley COMMAS OF THE SECOND
- From: "Cole Firearms Inc." <colefirearms11@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2007 03:47:11 GMT
Rick Stanley
Constitutional Activist
E-mail: rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
We the People Scoop 3/27/07
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OPINION RELEASE: COMMAS OF THE SECOND
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Gifford" <somford@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: COMMAS OF THE SECOND
>I raised some questions the other day about whether the different number of
>commas used in the Second Amendment make any difference in its meaning.
>Essentially, the older written versions I've seen in books --
> like Joseph Story's -- have one while more recent ones use three. I'm told the
> version on public display in Washington, DC has three, but that that is an
> anomaly to others of the period and to those sent around for ratification. I
> have seen one of them, and it contained one comma. Anyway, my question was, do
> the number of commas make a difference in the Second's meaning? The piece
> below in this morning's LA Times looks at that question as well.
> -Dan
>
>
>
> Can commas shoot down gun control?
> A grammarian takes issue with a court decision that picks apart clauses of the
> 2nd Amendment.
> By Dennis Baron
> Professor of English at the University of Illinois
> March 22, 2007
> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-baron22mar22,0,5526874.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
>
>
>
> CITING THE second comma of the 2nd Amendment, the U.S. Circuit Court of
> Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled March 9 that district residents may
> keep guns ready to shoot in their homes.
>
> Plaintiffs in Shelly Parker et al vs. District of Columbia were challenging
> laws that strictly limited who could own handguns and how they must be stored.
> This is the first time a federal appeals court used the 2nd Amendment to
> strike down a gun law, and legal experts say the issue could wind up in the
> Supreme Court.
>
> While the D.C. Circuit Court focused only on the second comma, the 2nd
> Amendment to the Constitution actually has three: "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." The 2-1 majority of judges held
> that the meaning turns on the second comma, which "divides the Amendment into
> two clauses; the first is prefatory, and the second operative."
>
> The court dismissed the prefatory clause about militias as not central to the
> amendment and concluded that the operative clause prevents the government from
> interfering with an individual's right to tote a gun. Needless to say, the
> National Rifle Assn. is very happy with this interpretation. But I dissent.
> Strict constructionists, such as the majority on the appeals court, might do
> better to interpret the 2nd Amendment based not on what they learned about
> commas in college but on what the framers actually thought about commas in the
> 18th century.
>
> The most popular grammars in the framers' day were written by Robert Lowth
> (1762) and Lindley Murray (1795). Though both are concerned with correcting
> writing mistakes, neither dwells much on punctuation. Lowth calls punctuation
> "imperfect," with few precise rules and many exceptions. Murray adds that
> commas signal a pause for breath. Here's an example of such a pause, from the
> Constitution: "The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one
> Supreme Court" (Article III, Section 1). But times change. If a student put
> that comma in a paper today, it would be marked wrong.
>
> The first comma in the 2nd Amendment signals a pause. At first glance, it
> looks like it's setting off a phrase in apposition, but by the time you get to
> the second comma, even if you don't know what a phrase in apposition is, you
> realize that it doesn't do that. That second comma identifies what grammarians
> call an absolute clause, which modifies the entire subsequent clause. Murray
> gave this example: "His father dying, he succeeded to the estate." With such
> absolute constructions, the second clause follows logically from the first.
>
> So, the 2nd Amendment's second comma tells us that the subsequent clauses,
> "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed," are
> the logical result of what preceded the comma: "A well regulated Militia,
> being necessary to the security of a free State." The third comma, the one
> after "Arms," just signals a pause. But the justices repeatedly dropped that
> final comma altogether when quoting the 2nd Amendment — not wise if you're
> arguing that commas are vital to meaning.
>
> But that's just my interpretation. As the D.C. Circuit Court decision shows
> us, punctuation doesn't make meaning, people do. And until a higher court says
> otherwise, people who swear by punctuation will hold onto their commas until
> they're pried from their cold, dead hands.
>
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the opinion of the editor or staff. It is shared for information
purposes only and it is recommended that you come to your own conclusions.
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