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Update: March 1, 2022:
A lot has happened in this thread since I started it, and a lot of realizations have come to me as a result of it (sometimes it just takes a good head-beating to get someone to realize something, and that's the case here.
).
Does the 2nd Amendment mean what its author(s) originally intended? The answer to that is: some might believe so as regards their own interpretation. But you'd never be able to prove it, even when the people in question claim that the meaning they hold matches what the author(s) intended. And that presumes a singular intent on the part of the author(s), something which can't even be established (and, given the nature of ratification, might not be as important as it might otherwise be).
Meaning is ultimately held by those who are listening. One can as an originator hope that the person listening gets your intended meaning, and you can do various things in an attempt to clarify your meaning, but in the end it ends up being a matter of interpretation. For things where there's some observable fixed point of reference (e.g., the observable real world as relates to the laws of physics), that's easier to pull off. There's no guarantee that the other person won't misinterpret your meaning but the nature of what you're communicating in that case combined with the possibility of creating new terms or even building an entire language that reflects the more exact nature of the subject is such that the possibility of the reader arriving at a meaning that differs from yours is at least somewhat unlikely.
Some disciplines, such as engineering, go to great lengths to minimize misinterpretation (where the meaning the originator was attempting to communicate differs in some important way from the meaning the recipient comes away with) because misinterpretation can have severe consequences, such as lost life, or lesser but substantial consequences, such as lost revenue. You don't, for instance, want your manufacturing organization to misinterpret the assembly instructions. But that's not what we're faced with here. What we're faced with here is a topic which by its very nature is inexact (because it's political, which means it's highly dependent upon opinion), combined with a language surrounding it that's inexact, combined with an originating culture that is no longer around, combined with the natural loss of understanding that occurs from the passage of time after the original authors are no longer around to consult. Combine all that and it's a miracle that there's any understanding left at all.
And that's probably just scratching the surface.
So the answer to the original question is: almost certainly not, except maybe by happenstance, and only for those few whose interpretation just happens to match (which nobody would ever be able to prove). If there's such a thing as a "match" in the first place.
Here's the original message, with the one edit I made a bit later:
----
EDIT: Note that this message is not predictive. And in retrospect, I probably should have titled it "Should the 2nd Amendment mean what its author(s) originally intended?". This doesn't really change the content of my message. I describe below why the 2nd Amendment should mean what its authors originally intended. But courts are well known for ignoring the intended meaning of that which they decide upon, and I expect that to continue to be the case.
TrappedinCalifornia and I have been debating the question of the meaning of the 2nd Amendment and how it applies today. This deserves a thread of its own, so here it is. It may prove useful, too, to start fresh, so I'll start with a somewhat modified version of what I kicked off the original debate with.
My claim is that the proper meaning of the 2nd Amendment, and any given part of the Constitution in general, is that which its authors originally intended, and that this, combined with the nature of the document it resides in (in particular, its primary and secondary audiences), dictates the methods that one must use to determine that meaning. To wit:
The proper approach is the "original intended meaning of the authors" approach. This is so because the Constitution is a written work that communicates meaning, and is no different than any other written work in that respect.
The purpose of "history and tradition" is to inform us of the original intended meaning behind what the authors of the 2nd Amendment wrote. It is to be used only if that meaning cannot be determined more directly, specifically through the plain meaning of the words themselves as understood by the authors and their contemporaries, or through other more direct means, as outlined below.
Put another way, the proper interpretation of the Constitution is via the same methods we would use to properly interpret any communication, which is something like this (in this order):
The above is "recursive", meaning that for any of the steps where the meaning of something more specific needs to be ascertained (for instance, a word or phrase), you execute the same set of steps starting at the beginning. Lather, rinse, repeat until you get a sufficiently unambiguous meaning for any given thing, and then apply that in the step you were in.
The reasons for doing the above are clear: the purpose is to identify the meaning the authors intended. And this is so because we do that for every communication, and for damned good reason: because whether you properly understand someone's meaning could easily make the difference between whether you live or die. Proper understanding of someone else's intended meaning is a survival trait. An example is the use of instructions to defuse a bomb. Get the meaning of the instructions wrong and you and/or others could easily die. This is true even if the bomb's construction differs from that which the instructions were written for, because you can't do a proper comparison of the two without properly understanding the instructions in the first place.
The methods we use to determine what someone else meant have been with us for millennia, essentially ever since our civilization arose. It is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order to insist that we must treat the Constitution any differently.
How does this apply to the 2nd Amendment, then? That much is obvious: the right shall not be infringed. It's right there in black and white, and the meaning of the term "infringe" is defined in Samuel Johnson's dictionary, and includes synonyms like "hinder". All that's left, then, is the scope of the right itself, and the minimum scope of the right to keep is also obvious from the context: the founding generation had just come out of a shooting war where every kind of privately owned arm they had proved instrumental in their effort to secure their liberty, ranging from the smallest of knives all the way to gunships. This means that no law which would have resulted in a ban on any of those weapons is valid in the face of the 2nd Amendment, because to argue otherwise is to argue that the founders would have agreed to a ban on the very arms they used to secure their liberty with, a proposal which is preposterous on its face, and amounts to an accusation that the founders were morons. More to the point, the 2nd Amendment has an explicitly stated minimum purpose, so it follows that no law may infringe on the right in such a way as to hinder the citizenry's ability to meet that stated purpose under any circumstances. That means, when read faithfully and with a proper understanding of the stated purpose of the right to arms, the 2nd Amendment protects private ownership of military arms on the part of the citizenry, namely anything they might need in order to remain free even in the face of a well-armed and well-armored malevolent tyrannical domestic government. It is no answer to say that the military itself would side with the citizenry. History is replete with instances where the exact opposite happened, most notably during the American Revolution itself, and the founders explicitly stated their distrust of standing armies (see, e.g., https://teachinghistory.org/history-...istorian/24671). As such, it is the founding generation's understanding that the government's military is, if anything, likely to be the force the citizenry is likely to go up against.
I've already dealt with carry as understood by the founding generation. It very clearly includes concealed carry, if only because concealed carry is the only way the founding generation could have kept their everyday carry firearms dry, and thus kept them from malfunctioning, in inclement weather.
A lot has happened in this thread since I started it, and a lot of realizations have come to me as a result of it (sometimes it just takes a good head-beating to get someone to realize something, and that's the case here.
).Does the 2nd Amendment mean what its author(s) originally intended? The answer to that is: some might believe so as regards their own interpretation. But you'd never be able to prove it, even when the people in question claim that the meaning they hold matches what the author(s) intended. And that presumes a singular intent on the part of the author(s), something which can't even be established (and, given the nature of ratification, might not be as important as it might otherwise be).
Meaning is ultimately held by those who are listening. One can as an originator hope that the person listening gets your intended meaning, and you can do various things in an attempt to clarify your meaning, but in the end it ends up being a matter of interpretation. For things where there's some observable fixed point of reference (e.g., the observable real world as relates to the laws of physics), that's easier to pull off. There's no guarantee that the other person won't misinterpret your meaning but the nature of what you're communicating in that case combined with the possibility of creating new terms or even building an entire language that reflects the more exact nature of the subject is such that the possibility of the reader arriving at a meaning that differs from yours is at least somewhat unlikely.
Some disciplines, such as engineering, go to great lengths to minimize misinterpretation (where the meaning the originator was attempting to communicate differs in some important way from the meaning the recipient comes away with) because misinterpretation can have severe consequences, such as lost life, or lesser but substantial consequences, such as lost revenue. You don't, for instance, want your manufacturing organization to misinterpret the assembly instructions. But that's not what we're faced with here. What we're faced with here is a topic which by its very nature is inexact (because it's political, which means it's highly dependent upon opinion), combined with a language surrounding it that's inexact, combined with an originating culture that is no longer around, combined with the natural loss of understanding that occurs from the passage of time after the original authors are no longer around to consult. Combine all that and it's a miracle that there's any understanding left at all.
And that's probably just scratching the surface.
So the answer to the original question is: almost certainly not, except maybe by happenstance, and only for those few whose interpretation just happens to match (which nobody would ever be able to prove). If there's such a thing as a "match" in the first place.
Here's the original message, with the one edit I made a bit later:
----
EDIT: Note that this message is not predictive. And in retrospect, I probably should have titled it "Should the 2nd Amendment mean what its author(s) originally intended?". This doesn't really change the content of my message. I describe below why the 2nd Amendment should mean what its authors originally intended. But courts are well known for ignoring the intended meaning of that which they decide upon, and I expect that to continue to be the case.
TrappedinCalifornia and I have been debating the question of the meaning of the 2nd Amendment and how it applies today. This deserves a thread of its own, so here it is. It may prove useful, too, to start fresh, so I'll start with a somewhat modified version of what I kicked off the original debate with.
My claim is that the proper meaning of the 2nd Amendment, and any given part of the Constitution in general, is that which its authors originally intended, and that this, combined with the nature of the document it resides in (in particular, its primary and secondary audiences), dictates the methods that one must use to determine that meaning. To wit:
The proper approach is the "original intended meaning of the authors" approach. This is so because the Constitution is a written work that communicates meaning, and is no different than any other written work in that respect.
The purpose of "history and tradition" is to inform us of the original intended meaning behind what the authors of the 2nd Amendment wrote. It is to be used only if that meaning cannot be determined more directly, specifically through the plain meaning of the words themselves as understood by the authors and their contemporaries, or through other more direct means, as outlined below.
Put another way, the proper interpretation of the Constitution is via the same methods we would use to properly interpret any communication, which is something like this (in this order):
- Use the plain meaning of the words used as they were defined at the time they were written. You do this because those meanings are almost certainly going to be the ones the authors had in mind because their intent was to communicate with others, and using any nonstandard (at the time) meanings would serve to obfuscate their intended meaning.
- Ask the authors directly what they meant, if possible, if the above is unclear or if there is good reason to believe the authors meant something else.
- Examine other works written by the same authors if asking them directly isn't possible.
- Examine the works of the authors' audience if the authors' other written works proves insufficient, starting with their most direct audience and working outwards towards their least direct audience.
- Examine the general traditions, history, etc., when none of the above is sufficient.
The above is "recursive", meaning that for any of the steps where the meaning of something more specific needs to be ascertained (for instance, a word or phrase), you execute the same set of steps starting at the beginning. Lather, rinse, repeat until you get a sufficiently unambiguous meaning for any given thing, and then apply that in the step you were in.
The reasons for doing the above are clear: the purpose is to identify the meaning the authors intended. And this is so because we do that for every communication, and for damned good reason: because whether you properly understand someone's meaning could easily make the difference between whether you live or die. Proper understanding of someone else's intended meaning is a survival trait. An example is the use of instructions to defuse a bomb. Get the meaning of the instructions wrong and you and/or others could easily die. This is true even if the bomb's construction differs from that which the instructions were written for, because you can't do a proper comparison of the two without properly understanding the instructions in the first place.
The methods we use to determine what someone else meant have been with us for millennia, essentially ever since our civilization arose. It is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order to insist that we must treat the Constitution any differently.
How does this apply to the 2nd Amendment, then? That much is obvious: the right shall not be infringed. It's right there in black and white, and the meaning of the term "infringe" is defined in Samuel Johnson's dictionary, and includes synonyms like "hinder". All that's left, then, is the scope of the right itself, and the minimum scope of the right to keep is also obvious from the context: the founding generation had just come out of a shooting war where every kind of privately owned arm they had proved instrumental in their effort to secure their liberty, ranging from the smallest of knives all the way to gunships. This means that no law which would have resulted in a ban on any of those weapons is valid in the face of the 2nd Amendment, because to argue otherwise is to argue that the founders would have agreed to a ban on the very arms they used to secure their liberty with, a proposal which is preposterous on its face, and amounts to an accusation that the founders were morons. More to the point, the 2nd Amendment has an explicitly stated minimum purpose, so it follows that no law may infringe on the right in such a way as to hinder the citizenry's ability to meet that stated purpose under any circumstances. That means, when read faithfully and with a proper understanding of the stated purpose of the right to arms, the 2nd Amendment protects private ownership of military arms on the part of the citizenry, namely anything they might need in order to remain free even in the face of a well-armed and well-armored malevolent tyrannical domestic government. It is no answer to say that the military itself would side with the citizenry. History is replete with instances where the exact opposite happened, most notably during the American Revolution itself, and the founders explicitly stated their distrust of standing armies (see, e.g., https://teachinghistory.org/history-...istorian/24671). As such, it is the founding generation's understanding that the government's military is, if anything, likely to be the force the citizenry is likely to go up against.
I've already dealt with carry as understood by the founding generation. It very clearly includes concealed carry, if only because concealed carry is the only way the founding generation could have kept their everyday carry firearms dry, and thus kept them from malfunctioning, in inclement weather.
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