THE GREAT COMMA DEBATE:

There’s been much debate (among pro 2A folks) lately over the use of the comma in the 2A. I think
this answers that question! at least it does for me
It also answers the hyphen question.

Nancy
WAGC

———–

http://www.rkba.org/research/rkba.faq.1

2.0.a “What’s the deal with the commas, and the hyphen in ‘well-regulated’? You gun nuts seem to be obsessed with them.”

In summary: Archaic punctuation, usage, and peculiar grammar (though
certainly no more peculiar than many modern legal documents) to some
degree obscure the plain meaning of the Second Amendment. As in any
human endeavor, mistakes can be made, and from time to time here on
t.p.g., the authors of this particular bit of the Bill of Rights get
flamed over whether there is in fact (or ought to be) a hyphen in
“well regulated” (and/or fewer commas overall) so as to clarify the
Amendment’s meaning to modern readers.
The choice of the adjective “unalienable” rather than “inalienable”
in the Declaration of Independence has scarcely received more notice
than the issue of proper punctuation in the Second Amendment. Confusion
over the punctuation dates back to the very drafting and ratification of
the Bill of Rights, since some sources give the text of Amendment II as

“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.”

with only one comma, and no internal capitalization. This version is
found in the Senate Journal for Sept. 25th, 1789, and in the Library of
Congress’ annotated version of the U.S. Constitution, as well as in the
ratification document for the Bill of Rights as passed by the State of
New York. Another version of the Second Amendment, this one reading

“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.”

can be found in the first volume of_U.S. Statutes at Large,_which was
published by the Congress in 1861 (note the capitalization of “State”
but not “militia” or “arms,” and the single comma).

*********************
The trouble is, the more commonly referenced version, which reads

“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.”

is the version which can be found on permanent display at the National
Archives, since it’s in the Federal Government’s original engrossed copy
of the Bill of Rights which was signed by Speaker of the House Frederick
Muhlenberg and Vice-President John Adams, and that is the version which
was copied and submitted to the states for ratification. This is also
the version found in the U.S. Code Annotated, and it appears to be the
version which was ratified, but given that the one-comma version is the
one that the Congress passed and published,
********
********
it would appear that any of the versions can be considered correct, and the
Great Comma Controversy
is unresolved (and perhaps unresolvable).
*****************************************
**********
The issue of what “well regulated” meant to the Framers is a much
simpler question to resolve. To the modern reader, “well regulated”
has acquired the primary connotation of_government_regulation, rather
than that of “efficient” or “well functioning” which it had in the 18th
Century. About the only common usage today of “regulate” in this sense
is found in those commercials dealing with “occasional irregularity,”
and as such, modern dictionary definitions, especially such as are
found in legal dictionaries, have little relevance to the issue.
The first dictionary of American English usage, published by Noah
Webster in 1803, gives no entry for “well regulated,” but does include
an entry for “regulars,” which Webster defines as “standing troops,
[as] opposed to militia.” The Oxford English Dictionary includes as
one of the definitions of “regulated” a meaning which directly applies
to troops, that of “properly disciplined,” and includes a citation to
a 1690 article in the_London Gazette._ Indeed, Alexander Hamilton uses
“well regulated” in this same martial sense in_Federalist #6_when he
writes that ancient “Sparta was little better than a well regulated
camp…” –in other words “an armed camp.” The British Whigs, whose
arms right incorporated in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 was the
antecedent for similar (but more generous) provisions in the Bills of
Rights of the American states, and later the Bill of Rights of the
United States, thought of a “well-regulated militia” as a check on
the power of the King, and that the RKBA was an individual right,
just as was the right to petition the King. The great English jurist
Sir William Blackstone wrote of the right to keep and bear arms as
just such an individual right in his 1765 _Commentaries on the Laws of
England,_and termed it the “fifth auxiliary right” of the subject,
and as important as those of “applying to the courts of justice for
redress of injuries,” “the right of petitioning the king,” and the
statutory “limitation of the king’s prerogative,” all of which served
to “protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights,
of personal security, personal liberty, and private property.”
Andrew Fletcher, a Scottish Whig, in his_Discourse on Government with
Relation to Militia’s,_[sic] wrote of the necessity of “well-regulated
militias” to defend not only against invasion by a foreign force, but
against the “danger of slavery at home,” a prospect that seems unlikely
if “well-regulated” means anything other than “properly disciplined.”
While “regulated” and “regulation” can certainly be said to have
“government regulation” among their meanings at the time of the writing
of the U.S. Bill of Rights, that connotation was far from as dominant
at that time as it has become today, in an age when self-regulation was
the rule, and a “well-regulated militia” was “the body of the people,
trained to arms.” Indeed, one of the most important characteristics
of a “well-regulated militia” as it was understood by the British Whigs,
and by the American Founding Fathers, was that it be a “general militia”
composed of the majority of citizens of the republic, rather than a
“select militia” or armed minority of troops who could impose their
will on a disarmed people, as the standing army of the King had done
upon his subjects. The term “regular army” (as opposed to “irregulars”)
gives some idea of the type of discipline and order which the authors
of the Second Amendment were trying to evoke with respect to the
militia, which they saw as the best available alternative to the dangers
and expense of a standing army. (See 3.3) The Second Amendment is best
considered as a modification of the existing militia clauses of the
Constitution, so as to prevent them from being interpreted in a way
that would permit the Congress to disarm the ordinary citizens and
establish a “select militia” or standing army in place of the “general
militia”.

———–End————–