On Wed, 2 Feb 2011 19:15:48 -0500 Henry E Schaffer <h...@unity.ncsu.edu> wrote:
> My conclusion is that while "militia" means "all able bodied adults" > (at that time it only included men), adding the modifying "well > regulated" meant that the militia had to not only exist, it had to > function properly - which at that time required firearms, firearms > training and practice. > > --henry schaffer I concur. Indeed, the point of my message that started this thread (http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/private/firearmsregprof/2010-December/008411.html) was that we now have a plethora of contemporary examples thanks to Google et alia. http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=well+regulated&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 On my brief informal examination, the "properly function" interpretation is much more accurate than the "run by government bureaucrats" interpretation. I don't recall finding an example to the contrary. -- Charles Curley /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign Looking for fine software \ / Respect for open standards and/or writing? X No HTML/RTF in email http://www.charlescurley.com / \ No M$ Word docs in email Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0 809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Firearmsregprof@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
