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.
Someone had this up on Facebook – her answer concerning the Second Amendment from the Citizen Count Survey 2018. So, once again this Representative, who has already shown her ignorance on the precept of Free Speech (she is mightily to suppress the speech of others that were critical of her voting record) and now shows it about the Second Amendment – to wit “well regulated“:
She obviously believes that our Constitution, a legal document which forms the foundation of our laws here in America, must be a living document because she’s changing the meaning. Wish I could change one of my legal documents (my contract with my mortgage company) from time to time to change its term, the interest rates, and other clauses. However, I can’t – the meaning of the words in that contract are locked in at the time of signing. Ditto when the Second Amendment was ratified.
And this is the HUGE problem with Progressives – they don’t know what they believe they do.
In this case, “well regulated” in the originalist text was clearly understood to NOT be what Liz McConnell wishes it to be: that government can, in modern parlance, regulate the heck out of our Right to Keep and Bear Arms (and blithely disregards the operative clause of “shall not be infringed” at the same time – I guess that part of the living document died when her eyes set upon the letters). Instead, “well regulated” meant “in good working order”:
The phrase “well-regulated” was in common use long before 1789, and remained so for a century thereafter. It referred to the property of something being in proper working order. Something that was well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected. Establishing government oversight of the people’s arms was not only not the intent in using the phrase in the 2nd amendment, it was precisely to render the government powerless to do so that the founders wrote it.
Thus, a “well regulated militia” in the original meaning meant a group of miltia officers and men that trained to use their arms correctly and efficiently and to be able to correctly function as a cohesive group in carrying out various types of military maneuvers.
So in her ignorance, she completely flips the idea on its head and interprets the Second Amendment in a “living fashion” so as to fit her political socialist ideology that demands that only “The State” should have the means of Force and thus, demands civilian disarmament.