Letter to the Editor regarding the "Militia" Argument

by C. Dodd Harris

Originally published on this website July 10, 2000

Mr. Harris has said that anyone may send this letter to their own newspapers whenever it will serve the cause to do so.

The following is a Letter to the Editor of the Louisville, KY Courier-Journal. This one was actually published on 27 April 1998.

Your paper has stated that supporters of the right to keep and bear arms purposefully misread the 2nd Amendment. You are seriously mistaken - the "purposeful misreading" is on your part, and on the part of the anti-gun movement as a whole.

The assumption upon which you predicate your attacks on the 2nd Amendment rights of your fellow citizens is that the amendment exists purely for the purpose of arming a state militia and therefore does not codify an individual right. Leaving aside the terribly inconvenient fact that the current United States code [10 U.S.C. 311 (a)] explicitly states that "[t]he militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males" between the 17 and 45 years of age who are not a part of the "organized militia" (the National Guard and Naval Militia), your assertion is manifestly false on semantic grounds.

It is shocking that an institution that lives and breathes in nothing but words has so little understanding of the structure of the language. According to Roy Copperud (retired professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, member of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and the author of American Usage and Style: The Consensus), "[t]he words 'A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,'" are not a restrictive clause. Rather, that phrase "constitutes a present participle. It is used as an adjective, modifying 'militia,' which is followed by the main clause of the sentence (subject 'the right', verb 'shall'). The 'to keep and bear arms' is asserted as an essential for maintaining a militia."

Further, "[t]he sentence does not restrict the right to keep and bear arms, nor does it state or imply possession of the right elsewhere or by others than the people; it simply makes a positive statement with respect to a right of the people." In short, the amendment guarantees a right held by the people, not the State. The Constitution consistently makes this distinction, referring to "the People" in numerous contexts; in every case, it is the rights of individuals to which this phrase refers. The 2nd Amendment is no exception. In fact, says Mr. Copperud, "[t]he right to keep and bear arms is not said by the amendment to depend on the existence of a militia.... The right to keep and bear arms is deemed unconditional by the entire sentence."

Who is guilty of purposeful misreading?

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