Back in December, I wrote about how the question of whether gun ownership is a fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution is currently under review by the U.S. Supreme Court. The New York Time recently published an excellent guest editorial about the role of the comma in this debate. Yes, I said the role of the comma. You see, part of the problem with the Second Amendment is its odd punctuation. The Second Amendment 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.
Notice the placement of the commas! It's confusing at best, unintelligible at worst. As the Times piece explains, advocates of gun rights claim the second comma, after "State," endows individuals with the right to bear arms. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed with this interpretation, and struck down a Washington D.C. law attempting to regulate gun ownership. Other advocates talk about "absolute phrases" and "main clauses;" things that would make a grammarian proud but leave the rest of us perplexed.
The author of the Times piece makes an interesting claim about how commas were used at the time the Second Amendment was written, and essentially claims the Court should ignore the commas altogether. Give the article a quick read to see how comma placement can cause headaches, especially when the commas were placed by people who use different grammar rules than we use today.
