lets start with an interpretation of the 2nd amendment in full.
1. Bear Arms. "To bear arms is, in itself, a military term. One does not bear arms against a rabbit. The phrase simply translates the Latin arma ferre. The infinitive ferre, to bear, comes from the verb fero. The plural noun arma explains the plural usage in English ('arms'). One does not 'bear arm.' Latin arma is, etymologically, war 'equipment,' and it has no singular forms. By legal and other channels, arma ferre entered deeply into the European language of war. To bear arms is such a synonym for waging war that Shakespeare can call a just war 'just-borne arms' and a civil war 'self-borne arms.' Even outside the phrase 'bear arms,' much of the noun’s use alone echoes Latin phrases: to be under arms (sub armis), the call to arms (ad arma), to follow arms (arma sequi), to take arms (arma capere), to lay down arms (arma ponere). 'Arms' is a profession that one brother chooses as another chooses law or the church. An issue undergoes the arbitrament of arms. In the singular, English 'arm' often means a component of military force (the artillery arm, the cavalry arm)
[...]
2. To keep. Gun advocates read 'to keep and bear' disjunctively, and think the verbs refer to entirely separate activities. 'Keep,' for them, means 'possess personally at home'— a lot to load into one word. To support this entirely fanciful construction, they have to neglect the vast literature on militias. It is precisely in that literature that to-keep-and-bear is a description of one connected process. To understand what 'keep' means in a military context, we must recognize how the description of a local militia’s function was always read in contrast to the role of a standing army. Armies, in the ideology of the time, should not be allowed to keep their equipment in readiness." [...]
In America, the Articles of Confederation required that "every state shall always keep up a well regulated and disciplined militia sufficiently armed and accoutred shall provide and constantly ready for use, in public stores, number of field pieces and tents, a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and equipage" (equipage being etymological sense of arma). Thus is as erroneous to suppose that "keep" means, of itself, "keep at home" as to think that "arms" means only guns. Patrick Henry tells us, the militia's arms include "regimentals, etc."˜ flags, ensigns, engineering tools, siege apparatus, and other "accoutrements of war.
Some arms could be kept at home, course. Some officers kept their most valuable piece of war equipment, a good cross-country horse, at home, where its upkeep was a daily matter feeding and physical regimen. But military guns were not ideally kept home. When militias were armed, it was, so far as possible, with guns standard issue, interchangeable parts, uniform in their shot, upkeep and performance— the kind of "firelocks" Trenchard wanted kept "in every parish" (not every home)[.]"
http://www.potowmack.org/garwills.html
I agree that this is a good place to start, but it can only tell us so much.
For instance, I wouldn't get too caught up with the commas if I were you. For one thing, there were two versions of the second amendment, one of which only contained the middle comma. The commas of the era didn't really have the same grammatical effect that they have today, if they did then the sentence would be incoherent. See: Commas and the Second Amendment.
What is really significant about the commas is that you will note that each of them follows a term of art: "a well regulated Militia," "the security of a free State," and "keep and bear Arms." Each of those phrases had a specialized legal meaning which the framers understood implicitly and yet these are not the same meanings as their contemporary meaning.
"Well-regulated militia" means more or less the same thing as it does today, as does "the security of a free State." Neither of these are identical to their contemporary meanings as you pointed out, but they are close enough that we are able to understand. "Keep and bear arms," however, had a very different meaning then than it does today, which is well-known to historian but lost on the modern reader. You might recognize the Latin "arma" from the opening line of Virgil's Aeneid. The framers certainly did. This phrase "to bear arms" is a calque from the Latin, in fact, as were many phrases from English common law. See the quote below, written by a distinguished history professor, for an illuminating discussion of what "keep and bear arms" actually meant to the framers:
There is very little to comment on here. You expect me to read entire articles on law instead of you selecting the necessary quotes and posting them then listing the resource? This is going to be a short debate as no one is going to do that.
I did select the necessary quotes. The ellipses break up the three pertinent sections I quoted from a scholarly article by Garry Wills, a distinguished, conservative history professor at Northwestern University. A link to the full article is provided in compliance with the rules of this true debate.
This post here does not count towards my three and you are in violation of the terms of the true debate in refusing directly address my points and the points I have made through sourced references. Please address my post directly.
After I was replying.
No. You edited your after I started a reply. So I was in violation of nothing. Even without the quotes I most certainly did address it.
As to your source, it is one mans opinion vs the opinion of the men who were there. He is also no conservative...
The text of the amendment, whether viewed alone or in light of the concerns that actuated its adoption, creates no right to the private possession of guns for hunting or other sport, or for the defense of person or property. It is doubtful that the amendment could even be thought to require that members of state militias be allowed to keep weapons in their homes, since that would reduce the militias' effectiveness. Suppose part of a state's militia was engaged in combat and needed additional weaponry. Would the militia's commander have to collect the weapons from the homes of militiamen who had not been mobilized, as opposed to obtaining them from a storage facility? Since the purpose of the Second Amendment, judging from its language and background, was to assure the effectiveness of state militias, an interpretation that undermined their effectiveness by preventing states from making efficient arrangements for the storage and distribution of military weapons would not make sense.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books/defense-looseness#
Addendum:
You said in your last post, "So as much as I find Gary Wills interesting, according to the original intentions of the founders in their own words, backed up by the language from a dictionary of the time and the United States Supreme Court, His opinion is not evidence of anything other than his own conclusions."
1. I have already explained in my second post that the dictionary clearly states that the militia was collective, not individual, so the roughly contemporaneous dictionary does not advance your argument, it is at best neutral and at worst actively works against you.
2. The founders in their own words have also only supported my point, since I do not dispute that the militia is comprised of "the people."
3. Furthermore, I have demonstrated by multiple sourced academic articles that the phrase "keep and bear arms" was understood by the founders to have a technical meaning that contradicts your argument and supports mine. You have failed to rebut this argument directly.
I ran out of edit time and posted an addendum. You chose to wrap yourself in the rules now? Ha! No doubt because you are losing. Poor sportsmanship indeed. I'll await a ruling from the mods before i post my conclusion.
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