Comma comedian
Dec 17, 2007 Lex scripta
I am not an expert on the Second Amendment, but other people are. One of them is Glenn Reynolds, and he’s got a very good insight into something that had been eluding my
understanding, based on a piece by Adam Friedman that focuses on the placement of commas in the text:
[T]he Framers considered an armed populace important, but didn’t trust the government — at either the state or federal levels — to arm the people. Since the armed populace (the “militia” was said to consist of “the body of the people”) was essential as a check on government power, the government couldn’t be allowed to disarm it by neglect. Thus, the Second Amendment may be “about protecting militias,” but it does so by keeping the populace armed.
Still pretty shoddy draftsmanship, but after all, they were pretty much new at this.
