The second comma divides the amendment into two clauses: one “prefatory” and the other “operative.”
Invariably they say this in an online debate to make their opponent scared at their “intellect” regarding the English language. The problem is that they aren’t being truthful. Shocking, I know, that someone who has weird beliefs about guns should be so dishonest.
Absolute clauses are indeed grammatically independent but that doesn’t mean that they are automatically unrelated. In fact, absolute clauses typically provide a causal or temporal context for the main clause.
The founders, most of whom were classically educated, would have recognized this rhetorical device as the “ablative absolute” of Latin prose. To take an example from Horace likely to have been familiar to them: “Caesar, being in command of the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence” (ego nec tumultum nec mori per vim metuam, tenente Caesare terras). The main clause flows logically from the absolute clause: “Because Caesar commands the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence.”
The second amendment written this way would read “Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” In other words, the amendment is really about protecting militias that were much needed to face the standing army of the British, a horrifying concept to the people of the time.
Explain this to the next liar who has cult-like beliefs about guns
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