Shall Not Be Infringed

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.

 There have been entire books written about this, so I know I'm not really saying anything new, but a pet peeve of mine is people who think that the phrase "well regulated Militia" is a blanket authorization for the regulation of arms.

Even aside from the historical and contextual basis for the amendment, the argument simply makes no grammatical sense.

The first clause is an explanatory clause, not a limiting clause. Take this sentence:

A well-educated electorate being necessary to the health of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall not be infringed.

The first clause states why the right to keep and read books shall not be infringed. It's a justification of the right. It doesn't limit which books the people shall be allowed to keep and read. That's completely non-sensical. If you wanted to establish a limit based on the contents of the explanatory clause, you'd write a sentence like:

A well-educated electorate being necessary to the health of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read educational books, shall not be infringed.

 See, that limits the lack of infringement to books that are related to having a well-educated electorate. Or you might write:

A well-educated electorate being necessary to the health of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall be regulated to ensure their educational value.

This also limits the books that can be kept and read to those that are within the scope of the explanatory clause. My original sentence would be something you'd never write if you were trying to write a rule to explain why it was OK for the government to limit what books you can keep and read.

Back to guns, if you wanted to apply the explanatory clause to the peoples' right to keep and bear arms, you wouldn't just write a blanket "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." You'd write something like this:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall be regulated in accordance with the rules of the Militia.

These were some of the most educated, erudite political minds not only of their time, but of all times. It is inconceivable that they would write a phrase like "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" when what was really intended was "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall be highly regulated."

If they had always meant the language of the amendment to apply to the states, not to the people directly, they would have written it in terms of the states, as is done in the 10th amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This amendment is a perfect example of how the authors of the Bill of Rights were cognizant of the difference between "the States" and "the people." If they had intended the second amendment to refer to the powers* of the States to maintain a Militia they would have written something like:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the power of the States to maintain an armed Militia of its citizens, shall not be infringed.

(*Governments don't have rights, they have powers. People have rights. This distinction is never violated anywhere in the language of the Constitution or its amendments.)

However, the amendment was not written that way. This simply cannot have been an accident. The language is too plain and clear. To argue otherwise is sophistry,and blatantly dishonest.

They made the language so clear and plain because they realized that government is wont to find excuses to usurp the rights of the people, and they didn't want to leave loopholes for that right to be infringed, thus a clear statement that the right shall not be infringed. The fact that modern readers have managed to find a loophole based in grammatical ignorance is a sad irony.

I could go on into the historical meaning and use of the term "well regulated," but it's not necessary. As an explanatory clause, it doesn't have any limiting grammatical effect on the main object and predicate of the sentence.