Among the signs carried by many of the half-educated
demonstrators protesting the Bill of Rights in Washington, D.C. was one that
read, "What part of 'well regulated' don't you
understand?" The reference is to the famous introductory phrase
of the 2nd Amendment, which says, "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." It is safe to say the
protester waving the sign meant it as a rebuke to those who think the 2nd
Amendment guarantees the right to own firearms.
As a
simple declarative sentence, despite the unnecessary use of commas typical of
18th-century writing, the amendment is perfectly clear to anyone with even a
rudimentary understanding of English. Yet in recent decades, it has
become the source of lies, distortion, and obfuscation by assorted opponents of
the Bill of Rights who claim that only members of a militia may own
guns. They include federal judges, left-wing activists, the
politicians they support, and assorted anti-gun nuts in academia and news
organizations. They pay homage to Michael Bloomberg and his
Billionaires' Crusade to Disarm the Peons by smearing the National Rifle
Association's 5 million members as a bunch of murderers and congressional
puppet masters and spread demonstrable nonsense about the Bill of Rights.
Most
of them, unlike the mawkish teens pumping their fists like Weathermen at a Viet
Cong rally, are real grown-ups in coats and ties, many with law degrees and
lots of official-sounding titles that make them seem like authoritative folks
who really know what they're talking about. But they don't.
The
ACLU, for example, in its hallucinatory interpretation, claims that "the
people" in the amendment refers not to persons, but to state governments
and their power to establish militias. The left-wingers there
do not explain how a description of state powers ended up in a list of things
called the "Bill of Rights." Others, including former
Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens, implausibly insist that the amendment
guarantees firearm ownership only to members of a militia.
That
is one of the greatest public frauds in U.S. history. Fortunately,
no one needs a law degree or even extensive knowledge of what America's Founders
thought about militias to see through the fraud and to understand the 2nd
Amendment. Knowing rudimentary English will do just fine.
Imagine
that the 2nd Amendment is about something other than
firearms. Suppose the amendment said, "A well-educated
electorate being necessary for the functioning of a free republic, the right of
the people to read and write books shall not be infringed."
Does
that mean only registered voters may read books? Of course
not. The right is guaranteed not to voters, but to people, from whom
the electorate is drawn. Does this imaginary amendment mean that
only trained librarians may read books? Does it mean that only
college graduates may write books? Does it mean that the government
gets to decide who may read books, and which books they may read? Of
course not. Does it mean that one can read but not write
books? Nope. Both are guaranteed activities.
Most
important of all, notice that the right to read and write is not dependent on
the well educated electorate. The reverse is true: the educated
electorate depends on the right. The origin and reason for the right
are not mentioned at all. It exists independent of the
electorate. The introductory phrase, which does not limit the right,
is simply the reason why the right "shall not be infringed."
Violations
of the guarantee are not allowed. That could not be more
explicit: the right "shall not be infringed." And
what does "infringe" mean? It means to limit, curb,
restrict, undermine, encroach, or diminish. That is clearly,
obviously, and undeniably forbidden.
Anyone
who says the right to read and write books is limited to registered voters is
either lying or an idiot. Now take a look at the journalists,
judges, politicians, and academics pushing the demonstrably false notion that
the 2nd Amendment limits the right to gun ownership to
militias. They, like CNN's Jeffrey Toobin – a magna cum laude
graduate who claims on YouTube that the 2nd Amendment is
"ungrammatical and mysterious" – are not idiots (at least not all of
them). The people pushing the nonsense that firearms ownership
depends on membership in a militia are smart, well educated
people. They can read English very well. They know what
the 2nd Amendment means. They have chosen to distort that meaning.