I think they understand the language just fine. Not to rap on all the lawyers, but their specialty is teasing whatever meaning they want from a set of words, no matter how badly the meanings must be twisted to do so.
Yeah, as I have said before, there are some good guys in the legal profession, but the 99% are giving the 1% a bad reputation.
The stunning thing about this controversy is that the meaning of the 2nd Amendment is crystal clear if you consider the historical context.
***
There is an important axiom of hermeneutics:
Context determines meaning. Unfortunately, the liberals use this axiom in a dishonestly, disrespectfully stupid way. They say that the final clause of the Amendment is interpreted in the light of the introductory clause, and they point out [correctly] that the first clause is emphasizing a collective right. That's fine. But the liberals go on to claim that this near context of the final clause narrows the final clause so as to render it as NOT affirming in any legally useful way an UNALIENABLE INDIVIDUAL right.
This supposedly gives THEM the RIGHT to take away our guns if they want to do so. (Well, how's that for an unalienable right?) They are delighted to mock the idea of a modern-day militia and to use this mockery to take away our unalienable rights to
self defense. But the truth is, they are performing this legal sleight-of-hand precisely because they are afraid of a modern counterpart of a
militia being able to block their murderous Marxist revolution--which is the anti-democratic end game of a Marxist takeover.
Make no mistake about it, the Marxists want guys like us
dead. A "progressive" college professor actually informed me that he and his ilk were surely going to
kill me. When we grasp this, we need to notice that the Marxists are overruling the entire 2nd Amendment--overruling BOTH clauses. That, in turn, proves that their hermeneutic is phony. Their position is diametrically opposed to the most important context of all--the
historical context of the 2nd Amendment.
See Eugene Volokh's research on the legal documents of the period. The Framers were following the rhetorical tradition of their own day. They were
introducing their Constitutional affirmation of an individual right to self defense by citing one of perhaps many
corollary benefits of that legal doctrine of self defense presented in the dramatic final clause. In other words, the entire Amendment is definitely, even fiercely upholding the individual right.
We must not budge an inch. We must not make unnecessary and therefore counterproductive concessions to liberals, including even "Republicans" like that reprobate John Paul Stevens. We must stop the ongoing and worsening infringements--no matter what form they take. Our arguments must openly defy those who say we need to "clarify" a Constitutional right to bear arms. The SCOTUS has already "clarified" it--by simply noticing and proclaiming that the individual right is integral to the 2nd Amendment.
The more I have mused over the 2nd Amendment, the more I am inclined to say it is perhaps the most important Amendment in the entire Bill of Rights. The more the political war rages, the more prepared we have to be for its escalation.
