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While on a university campus in California some years ago, I asked for a dictionary from the 1700's era. They had one, one of those really big and thick books with covers that feel like planks of wood. A very cool old book.
According to that dictionary, the primary definition of "regulated" back then was more like "well adjusted" or "in tune" or "coordinated". Perhaps this is why you see the word "Regulated" on the faces of clocks from that period - it was a claim of quality, suggesting that the mechanism was better tuned or adjusted than lesser timepieces. Obviously it had nothing to do with the legal restriction of clocks, so it had to have some other meaning in that day.
I later discussed this with an English language professor (whose political leanings I don't know) and his take on it, given the dictionary reference, was that the word was most likely intended to suggest that the citizens of the militia (those who chose to keep and bear arms) would, through ready access to and frequent practice with arms, be more of a "team" or a more coordinated "system".
Given this interpretation, the meaning of the Second Amendment in more modern language becomes something like "A well [practiced] [group of armed citizens]being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
I think the anti-gun crowd puts too much emphasis on the word "regulated" while conveniently forgetting to consider the historical definition of that word. Likewise, I think the pro-gun crowd ignores the first phrase of the Second when, properly analyzed, it actually *supports* their case. They play into the hands of the anti-gun crowd when they do this. |
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I went a step further, and looked up the meaning of the word "regulated" in a dictionary from the 1700's... New 
BoaterTalk 
