Defining The Second Amendment

Stephen Halbrook pulls out his copy of Noah Webster's dictionary in Defining The Second Amendment.

Anticipating the Supreme Court's expected late June decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which will decide the constitutionality of a D.C. law restricting gun-ownership rights, many analysts have turned to the Founders' writings in an effort to understand the Second Amendment. What analysts need to do - recognizing that language and word usage change over time - is turn to America's first dictionary.

Much of what passes as legal argument from the antis involves redefining the English language so that the 2nd Amendment says whatever they want it to say. But for the text of the Amendment, or any other part of the Constitution, to have any meaning, we must look at what the writers meant by the words they chose. What the antis and their fellow travelers on the left don't see is the long term danger contained within their desire to distort the meanings of simple words. Larry Elder quotes Alan Dershowitz warning liberals of these dangers:

liberal law professor Alan Dershowitz... scolds fellow liberals for twisting the words of the Second Amendment in a way that could come back to haunt them. "Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming that it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard," said Dershowitz, "don't see the danger of the big picture." He added, "They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like."

There is hope, however. None of the Supreme Court Justices made any serious attempt to use the antis' redefinitions of the words of the 2nd Amendment. Predicting Court decisions based upon the Justices' questions is risky, but this bodes well in any event.