Changed the English language, eh?
Hardly.
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.
Look at the clauses:
Clause 1: A well-regulated Militia
Clause 2: being necessary to the security of a free State
Clause 3: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms
Clause 4: shall not be infringed.
Clause 1 is used as noun, clause 2 as an adjective modifying section 1.
Clause 3 is being used as a noun, and acts as the subject.
Clause 4 is the predicate to section 3.
The first two clauses together are referred to as the justifying clause.
Keep in mind the use of well-regulated at the time, which meant "well functioning" not "Holy crap, add moar red tape!"
Also, keep in mind that the Bill of Rights, as written, lists entirely individual rights, which would make sense, seeing as the Bill of Rights was written to calm down the anti-Federalists who would be pretty upset at how powerful the current Federal government is compared to the states.
So, in shorthand using section #s for brevity:
(1 modded by 2) justifying 3 and 4.
There's really no way you could possibly try to misconstrue it to any different and maintain any level of intellectual honesty... I mean, seriously, without any editing, do you think ((1-2)-3), 4 makes any sense at all?
To pound the point a little further, simple word substitution makes it pretty obvious:
"A well-educated electorate, being necessary to the self-governance of a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed."
Can you look at that and with honestly tell me that substitution doesn't mean that people should be able to own any book they wish?
Or rather, would you try to tell me that surely there should be reasonable restrictions to that as well?
Perhaps we should restrict people's access to books with unnessisarily large amounts of words in them like anti-2nd amendment types want to factory capacity magazines? Factory cap mags? Yes, factory cap mags. They only become high-capacity magazines when you compare them to the anemic 3/5/7/10 shot magazines less gunfriendly states impose on their people.
Or perhaps, ban the ones with pointy edges because someone might get hurt, like bayonet lugs were on the ban list in 94. Bayonet lugs. Seriously. Has anyone ever heard of a drive-by bayonetting? If the whole idea was crime prevention, when was the last time you heard of someone getting bayonetted in the news?
Or maybe just the ones with really big multisyllabic words like some people want to ban firearms over a certain size? Like somehow someone could reliably shoot down aircraft with a .50cal rifle. My favorite was seeing an interview with some anti-gun type from the Brady campaign insisting that people could knock down a 747 with a single shot from a .50cal. I'm pretty certain they were the kind of person who believes Kennedy was killed with a single bullet too.
Maybe we should ban book series, like they banned automatic weapons? But only the one written after 1986. Every other one, you can own if you write a $200 check to the Dept. of Alchohol, Tobacco, and Books... which enables you to own shorter books (short barrel shotguns/rifles), some books with objectionable content and/or really big words (destructive devices), soft book covers to keep the book from banging around (silencers) and things that just might not be a book at all but it kinda looks like one ("Any other weapon).
Or clearly, we should ban only the books that get straight to the point with little fuss (real assault-type weapons), but unfortunately in the process of doing so, only ban the ones with scary covers that remind us of those mentioned previously (what the '94 AWB did instead)?
I think perhaps some people need a good civics lesson so they can find out what the Founding Fathers really intended for this country, and then they should be left alone in a dark room for a bit so they can let it sink in just how far we've strayed from the path the founders collectively wanted for us.
It saddens me that so many are so willing to discard their rights for so pathetically little reason. And once those rights are gone; they're gone. If you can't devise some way to get them back quickly, you'll likely never see them again. Why? Because future generations will grow up never having that right in the first place, and never understanding why it was important in the first place. After all, they grew up just fine, yes?
Don't get me wrong, we've done many, many good things, many mighty things, but those first 10 Amendments were things so dear to the founders of this country, that they were etched into the very Constitution it stands on, the very constitution I swore to uphold and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic almost a decade ago, but the logic used to strip so many people of so much of what God has given them sickens me. The fact that so many fail to notice this happening is sad, but worse yet are those that roll over and bleat harder for the government to take more because someone/something offends them, or because something frightens them and they're not willing to do anything about it themselves or they never learned the real definition of tolerance.
So few people seem to realize that according to the framers of the Constitution, your rights came from God, not the US Government. If that's the case, under whose authority does the Government strip you of your recognized rights?
I'm sure many will try to come up with some childish or inane attempt at something witty to explain away what I said, or just plain insult me... do as you wish; those of you who wish to learn need to start comprehending instead of just reading... and then wake up the sheep around you to the reality of what has happened.