I’m not a lawyer. I suppose if I was, my opinion on the Second Amendment would be constrained by whatever dumb decisions the Supreme Court has made. It has taken me a long time to understand that the Second Amendment has never actually applied to me personally. That’s because I have never served in any state’s National Guard.
I do have some experience with a rifle, and a couple of days of training with a machine gun. But that was neither allowed nor disallowed by the Second Amendment. To honestly be an originalist, one has to actually read the whole amendment and try to understand it as people understood it when it was ratified, without putting it through the filter of modern grammar, and certainly without trying to nudge the conclusion to a predetermined outcome.
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.
We can certainly engage in mental gymnastics to arrive at the conclusion that the first clause, “A well regulated … a free State,” is grammatically independent of the second clause, “the right of … shall not be infringed.” Consider this alternative version:
Rainbows are beautiful to look at. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
I already hear the objection. The two clauses are decidedly independent of each other, but the first clause is irrelevant. But if you’re going to argue that the first clause of the Second Amendment does not grammatically modify the second clause, then we should be able to delete the first clause, or maybe make it its own amendment, like so:
Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, each State may have a militia.
If the Founding Fathers had thought to separate out a state’s right to have a militia to its own amendment, it would have been much clearer that the right to a militia is a right exercised by a state and the right to keep and bear arms is a right exercised by a person.
Are you buying this? Even if you are, the second clause is still problematic for deriving an unrestricted individual right to guns. “The right of a person to keep and bear–,” wait, it doesn’t actually say “of a person,” it says “of the people,” which is plural.
The people may still decide that certain persons (such as, for example, the partially blind) may not own nor use guns. The people may also decide that those who are allowed to have guns should have weapons appropriate for a declared purpose. So a duck hunter doesn’t need a Ruger SR22, just as you wouldn't expect a Secret Service agents to trade his SIG Sauer for a Remington Sendero SF II.
Or the people may decide that certain kinds of people (such as men who’ve beat up their wives) shouldn’t own nor use any kind of gun whatsoever. But this is all my interpretation. Judging by the case with which Justice Clarence Thomas chose to break his lengthy silence, it looks like the current Supreme Court would vigorously disagree with me on this one.
But maybe instead of spending so much time parsing and sifting the words of the Second Amendment, gun fanatics ought to spend a little more time studying the rules of gun safety.
Treat every weapon as if it were loaded.
Some people will say this is asinine, because a loaded gun is different from an unloaded gun. Tell that to the girlfriend of the man who accidentally killed himself while taking a selfie with a gun. One report mentions that the man for some reason kept unloading and reloading the gun, and apparently lost track of whether the gun was loaded or not when he made his fatal mistake.
Never point a weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot.
So if you don't want to kill your daughter, don't point your gun at her.
Keep finger straight and off the trigger until you are ready to fire.
If you’re holding a gun and you sneeze, could you unintentionally pull the trigger? I don’t know the answer to that question and I don’t want to find out. If you feel a sneeze coming on, your finger should be off the trigger anyway.
Keep weapon on safe until you intend to fire.
They usually mention this one fourth rather than first. Think of it this way: the gun’s safety mechanism really is the last line of defense against accidental shootings.