2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: How to shut up a gun nut about his Second Amendment rights. [View all]jimmy the one
(2,708 posts)hack: "well regulated" in the context of the 2A has nothing to to do with rules and regulations. That is a modern definition of regulated that did not come in to common usages until the industrial revolution. In 1781 regulated in the context of the 2A meant well trained and equipped.
hack - after I posted websters 1828 definition of 'regulate' (above post):
Ok - I was wrong about the date. my point still stands.
Your point collapses; Hack contends that websters 1828 definition should not apply to what founding fathers intended in 2ndA in 1791 by 'well regulated', since it was some 35 years later.
Yet samuel johnson in his 1755 dictionary (which the better source? dictionary wrote 35 years prior to a word usage, or 35 years after?) also wrote of rules to regulate:
A Dictionary of the English Language 1755 Classic by Samuel Johnson:
To Régulate. To adjust by rule or method. Nature, in the production of things, always designs them to partake of certain, regulated, established essences, which are to be the models of all things to be produced: this, in that crude sense, would need some better explication. Locke.
To direct. Regulate the patient in his manner of living. Wiseman.
Ev'n goddesses are women; and no wife Has pow'r to regulate her husband's life. Dryden.
http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/?p=8802
Here's how 'militia' was defined by johnson in 1755: Milítia. n.s. [Latin.] The trainbands; the standing force of a nation.
The militia was so settled by law, that a sudden army could be drawn together. Clarendon
And 'Arms' in 1755: Arms - Weapons of offence, or armour of defence.
Those arms which Mars before Had giv'n the vanquish'd, now the victor bore. Pope's Iliad.
2 A state of hostility. Sir Edward Courtney, and the haughty prelate,
With many more confed'rates, are in arms. Shakes. R. III.
3 War in general. Arms and the man I sing. Dryd. VIrgil.
Him Paris follow'd to the dire alarms, Both breathing slaughter, both resolv'd in arms. Pope's Iliad.
4 Action; the act of taking arms. Up rose the victor angels, and to arms
The matin trumpet sung. Milton's Paradise Lost