Al Barrs wrote:
Two points you either missed or don't understand in the context of today's style of writing;
1) Research the writing styles of long ago, including our Founding Documents and the Bible and you will see that their style of writing differs from our 'simple sentence' style of today. Where we use lots of periods they used lots of commas to separate thoughts and clauses, so too the 2nd Amendment and other amendments and Articles of the U.S. Constitution.
2) A "militia" in 1787 was made up of the town's people not conscripts, but volunteer towns people, nor was it funded by any government, state or colonial and certainly not funded by Great Britain king or Parliament. The town volunteers bought and furnished their own weapons and ammunition, clothing, etc. Usually a leading citizen in the community would organize a local militia who might join up with another communities militia. Often the chosen town citizen leader of a militia bought uniforms and other equipment the people's militia needed to defend their towns, families and properties. The central nor colonial or state government, nor certainly the British Government had nothing to do with the 1787 style American militia.
Postscript: The American Revolutionary War, or War of Independence broke out precisely because the king of Great Britain ordered his military, British Redcoats, station in the American Colonies to march on town, arrest colonial town leaders, who would have been expected to be the leaders of militias, and confiscate the townsmen's weapons and ammunition. The towns' people got wind of the British move to disarm the people of the Colonies and began to organize individually, then these citizen, not colonial governments, met the Redcoats at Lexington and Concord ready to use their weapons and ammunition to defend their towns, families, property and what they had come to believe their right to run their own affairs "without interference" from the king and his government in Great Britain. The second clause of the 2nd Amendment reads, "..., the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The right of the PEOPLE to KEEP and BEAR ARMS simply means, even today, we the people of the Nation retain our right to own and carry our own weapons, uninfringed by any government, WITHOUT restrictions of any kind as to which type of weapons we, the people, have the inherent or God's right to keep and bear. That citizen's right to keep and bear arms is our Founders insurance policy that protects the rest of our Bill of Rights of individuals, which are by the way not rights or powers of the Government, they are we, the people's, rights; and the 2nd Amendment is the Founders insurance policy to we citizens that protects all of the other rights and powers of the People, whether they are enshrined in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, as expressed simply but plainly in the 9th and 10th Amendments of OUR, we individual citizen's, Bill of Right and Constitution, which are one and the same. Our Constitution's limited powers of the people created central or Federal government and its Bill of Rights of individuals is the foundation of all of our laws and is to be respected and followed as our Founders intended...
May God continue to bless the People of the United States of America!
Two points you either missed or don't understand i... (
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Yes sir you quite correct in your ideas. I especially agree with you on how the revolutionary war began. It will happen again if they "come and take them". The second amendment makes all the others possible.