The Second Amendment, about which there is so much fuss, including interpretive gymnastics that can make it the object of fun, has an almost infinite import-to-words ratio. The full text is:
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.
Yet it could have been even shorter. For example, instead of ratifying the above Amendment, the drafters could have said simply:
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
This would have preserved us from a lot of ludicrous interpretations that, beginning with a conclusion, try to reason backwards to give some account of the crazy militia business. It also would have saved us from the absurd but entertaining sight of these overfed old white men conducting their "training missions" in the woods and fields of rural America in anticipation of . . . something, don't really know what. The invasion of the Homeland by the jack-booted enemies of liberty who reside in their overwrought imaginations. Others, comparatively sane, probably just enjoy the sensation of having something hard in their pocket.
In other words, the Founders could have easily established an absolute right to gun ownership for private citizens, if that's what they had wanted to do. That they did something else may be seen by indulging ourselves in just a little speculation. Suppose the Second Amendment said only
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
and that, 250 years later, some do-gooding liberals, effeminately alarmed by an epidemic of gun violence, proposed to amend the Amendment by appending an opaque introductory clause. Isn't it obvious that all the self-described patriots would be furious? They'd recognize the proposal for what it in fact would be, the first move in a game of chess the object of which is to place restrictions on gun ownership. But the Amendment with the opaque introductory clause--the one that might allow for guns to be regulated somewhat like liquor and tobacco and motor vehicles--is the one the Founding Fathers actually did ratify.
Here is more on the subject from John Paul Stevens, a retired Supreme Court justice. He thinks the Second Amendment is five words too brief.
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