{"id":47,"date":"2016-06-17T14:53:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T14:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/2016\/06\/17\/pesky-clauses-2\/"},"modified":"2020-02-10T20:05:38","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T20:05:38","slug":"pesky-clauses-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/2016\/06\/pesky-clauses-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Pesky Clauses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watched a splash of Colbert yesterday afternoon. Colbert was not being “Colbert;” he was interviewing Bill O’Reilly<\/a>. In the course of the interview<\/a>, he quoted the 1st clause of the 2nd Amendment… you know (or should) … the one that comes before “shall not be infringed.”<\/span>

<\/span>As a refresher, here’s the whole text:<\/span>

<\/span>“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.”<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>The ambiguity has been much discussed. <\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>Does that mean:<\/span><\/span>
‘Because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to form such a militia and, in the context of that, maintain weapons and exercise the skill set that makes the use of such weapons effective?’<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>Or is it:<\/span><\/span>
‘The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.’ (Both; separately.) <\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>For the framers, who lived and died before there was such a thing as a “fully automatic,” or “semi automatic” weapon, long rifles fired maybe three bullets per minute. Surely many militiamen still kept and bore muskets. These weapons fired ‘balls’ one at a time, with time between to load a charge, insert a ball, and tamp it down. Take aim. Fire. Haven’t most of us seen these antique weapons at reenactments? Stately. Time consuming; slow motion even by our standards.<\/a><\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>Never mind. Had they had accurate, automatic weapons they would have used them. Humans are most adept at killing. As a species, our restraint has never caught up with our destructiveness.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>Restraint. The period. The comma. The semicolon. Independent clauses. <\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>The roll call of the dead. <\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>The moment of silence.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>The prayers.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>The argument…<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>How about:<\/span><\/span>
‘A well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>The two clauses are still juxtaposed. To what end?<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>We will argue. We’ll keep shooting each other up. Guaranteed.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>A bear eats, shoots, and leaves.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watched a splash of Colbert yesterday afternoon. Colbert was not being “Colbert;” he was interviewing Bill O’Reilly. In the course […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mini-essay","category-politics","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":646,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}