How do you feel about requiring people to be highly trained, per type of gun, including gun safety and gun protocol, before being allowed to buy guns? Or requiring mental health training in some form or fashion? (this perspective being rooted in the "well-regulated militia" requirement bit in the States)
Seeing that I’m a linguist by trade, the language of the second amendment is a big sticking point for me because none of the modern pro gun control advocates are reading it correctly, and I have a feeling that they’re doing this on purpose, not because they’re ignorant. Allow me to explain, and forgive me for the tangent. This is the actual text of the amendment:
"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 constructed from two clauses - the prefatory clause (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State“) and an operative clause (“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”). The former is subordinate to the latter, not the other way around. What it means is that the rights of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed, period, and that the existence of militias is necessary for the safety and security of a free state. We know this because, at the time of writing (and many years after), gun control the way it operates today was unthinkable and would’ve been considered tyranny. Civilians had the same *or often times better* armaments than any standing military force.
Moreover, it *does not* require one to be part of a militia, but it does consider the right to bear arms to be a necessary prerequisite for forming one. It *does not* refer to the National Guard, or the state police, or any organisation related to the state - none of those organisations have even existed. This is specifically a right of citizens, in spite of the state, not in service of it. The right to bear arms is *not* contingent on membership in any such organisation, it’s the existence of such organisations that is contingent on the right to bear arms, as an unarmed militia probably wouldn’t be very effective.
Finally, what does “well-regulated” mean? It most certainly does not imply any form of government regulation. The term “well-regulated” was common in the 18th century and meant “in good working order”. In the context of the second amendment, it implies proper training, discipline and orderly conduct… for militias. The amendment says nothing about the average Joe’s level of training. Let’s remember, we’re talking about a time when a weapon was considered a tool no different than a hoe to till a field with or an axe to fell a tree with.
With all this being said, if we read the text of the second amendment *as it is written* and *as it was intended by the people who wrote it*, which is the only way to correctly interpret text, any sort of regulation of gun ownership of law-abiding citizens is an infringement of their constitutional rights. I say law-abiding, because the constitution allows for limitations of liberty so long as the 5th amendment due process requirements are fulfilled. If “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” then a person *can* be deprived of life, liberty or property *with* due process of law. If someone’s *not* a law-abiding citizen, they can be deprived of liberty (prison), their life (death penalty) or their property (seizure). Very simple.
To distill all this into one sentence, the second amendment says two things - that militias are necessary for the safety and security of a free state (nominative absolute, it’s stating the obvious, in isolation to the rest of the sentence) *and* that the *people’s* right to bear arms shall not be infringed (the actual enumerated right).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_absolute
This kind of grammatical construction is “fancy-shmancy” and not commonly used nowadays, which is why it throws most people for a loop. They say that the arms must be well-regulated, or that you must be part of a militia, or that you must have military-grade training to bear arms, or other various misinterpretations - the second amendment doesn’t say that. It says “shall not be infringed”, and that’s what it’s supposed to mean, with no caveats.
Now, you’ll have to rephrase the question. Do I think people should be well-trained and have their wits about them when operating potentially deadly machines? Yes. Do I think that the state has the right to decide how many inches of stock are permitted before the exact same mechanism is deemed illegal, or whether or not people are allowed to purchase silencers (which are primarily safety devices and do not increase the lethality of the weapon they’re attached to, because real life isn’t Hollywood)? No.
On the subject of sanity, who’s making that estimation? Not the state, I hope - I’m pretty sure that’s a job for healthcare professionals.
