2nd Amendment Thoughts From Dave Girves

Letters to the Editor

Columbus Dispatch,

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the rights of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

When I read the Second Amendment from the perspective of what I learned in high school English, five decades ago, what I see is a single sentence talking about “a well regulated militia”. The most prominent place in that sentence, the very first phrase, is “a well regulated militia”. The sentence does not have two topics.

That sentence is only talking about a “militia,” specifically a “well regulated” militia. That militia is what is necessary. Therefore the “people” who make up that militia must have the right to bear arms. In 1776 it was most of the “people” who made up the militia. Today that militia is the police department and our armies – well regulated and bearing arms.

Does anyone really think that our forefathers intended for the people (three guys in a Dodge Durango) to have the right to bear arms while only the militia needed to be "well regulated"?

“The rights of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed,” is nothing more than a subordinate clause in that sentence. If the framers of the Constitution had intended for just anyone to own a gun, they would have made that clause an independent sentence. If the gun lobby had been around back then, I worry that’s how it might have read. But since the gun lobby is here today, the Supreme Court has modified our founders’ intent.

I am constantly amazed by the intelligence and thoughtfulness of those who wrote our Constitution and wonder why God didn’t see fit to give us that caliber of politicians today.

David Girves
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(I'm thinking of starting a petition insisting that Dave explain the English language to Antonin Scalia and the NRA's Wayne Lapierre. Man, they need it!)