| Fair point about the separate clauses-- but what's the intent of the "well-regulated" part, then? That whole preface was a compromise of sorts, a sop thrown to the anti-Federalists who wanted to outlaw standing armies and depend on the militia system. Which just wasn't practical in such an unthreatened place like the US, compare to Switzerland---and I wonder what will happen with their post-Cold War downsizing when things get hot again. And there was the minor detail that George Washington, the essential man in all this, wouldn't sign off on such a prohibition. He's not as anti-militia as he's sometimes made out to be, but his position that a complete dependence on the militia system wouldn't do was unrefutable. The well regulated part of it came from the observation that if you just keep the militia's weapons in armories except for formal practice and fighting, an excuse the British used to confiscate all of them in Boston, the militia members aren't going to be any damn good with them when put to the test. Again going back to the Swiss system, at least during the Cold War once you were in the reserves you had to qualify with your personal weapon once a year, failure to score high enough signed you up for a 2 week refresher course. So they have an insane number of 300 meter range lines, subsidized and very high quality ammo sold at them (in theory you're supposed to use it all up on the spot), and a whole bunch of other things to encourage good marksmanship. Hmmm, you know, going back to what the British did back then, very few of the arguments are new, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were based on direct, living memory of their depredations back then. Modify at your peril. |