“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.”

You may remember from grade school something called a Non-restrictive Clause, and how it differs from a Restrictive Clause. To refresh your memory, look at this definition from grammar-monster.com:

A non-restrictive clause is a clause that provides additional, non-essential information. In other words, a non-restrictive clause is not needed to identify the word it modifies, i.e., it’s just bonus information. As a non-restrictive clause is not essential to the meaning of a sentence, it is offset with commas (or some other parenthetical punctuation such as dashes).

grammar-monster.com

See that comma in the 2nd Amendment at the top of the page? That makes the phrase “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” a classic example of a non-restrictive clause. And from the definition of such a phrase, we find that it “provides additional, non-essential information … it’s just bonus information.”

Wouldn’t it be fun to have a student use the 2nd Amendment as an example of a non-restrictive clause, just to hear the teacher’s response? Unfortunately, they probably no longer teach English grammar in school…

Rephrase as a Resolution

Alternatively, what if the 2nd Amendment had been written as a resolution? It might go something like this:

WHEREAS, the security of a free state is essential; and

WHEREAS, a well-regulated militia is necessary to ensure a free state;

NOW THEREFORE, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

This is even clearer and does essentially the same thing as the Amendment.

By admin