Steve Halbrook on 2A wording

I would argue that Regulated, and Well-Regulated do not mean the same thing. My view of a well-regulated militia is one that is well trained and able to act in unison, on command.

I generally agree. Well regulated and regulated have different meanings in period usage. In the Bill of Rights context, well regulated militia refers to an effective militia of the people, not to a government regulated militial.

I like to think that to some degree, I am being regulated every time I go to the rifle range, or participate in a training match or event. In fact, wouldn't being a part of our community/neighborhood watch group equate at least somehow to "well-regulated?"

Am I far off the mark? Can "well-regulated" be construed liberally?

I did some research years ago on the usage of "well-regulated" at the time the Constitution was written, the results are up at
http://www.xring.com/~james/WellRegulated.html

I do think that he is being a little strict with the bear arms. Since some milita groups had cannon, and the Constitution talks of Letters of Marque which means private warships, I think that the weapons allowed are any that a reasonable person would believe good for fighting invaders or the Government. Everything but NBC.

Civilians already have tanks, aircraft, jets, cannon (6 inch naval guns + ammo, owned by a guy in California), rockets, and just about anything else you can think of.

So it matters little what "arms" means. But if you make it only those arms carried by an infantry man that can work. Blows holes in the NFA, but the NFA is unconstitutional anyway.

I remember reading an article a couple of years ago in which the author stated that from about the same time as our founding, gunmakers have "regulated" double-barreled guns such that both barrels hit the same spot. In this sense, "well-regulated" connotes "well-trained".

If I were to mention in conversation that my digestive system has been well regulated lately, I wouldn’t be referring to any implemented government parameters

I would agree that "Well Regulated" meant "orderly", "in-control", "well trained", "effective".

I was surprised to find "well regulated" used so often, regarding standing armies, in Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations". Smith had a good deal to say about militias, but more often used "well-regulated" to refer to the standing armies of the time.

Seeing how closely the preamble to our Constitution follows the outline for good government that Smith proposed in WoN, I wonder just how much influence he had over the Founding Fathers, and over the use of "well regulated".

There is no doubt that the common understanding and use of the term "regulated" back then was quite different than its generally understood meaning today. The notion of a government agency overseeing and controlling private actions was anathema to the Framers of the Constitution. In fact, the bloated Executive Branch today likely would horrify them. They likely would consider much of the administrative regulations unconstitutional delegations of legislative power by Congress. They clearly did not mean "subject to close government control" by use of the term "well-regulated."

Regulated means "made regular." I'm sure many have seen the old wall clocks that say "regulator" on them. This does not mean the clock is a representative of government. It means the mechanism is well-regulated; i.e., it functions in a proper, orderly manner and keeps good time. To "regulate" something is keep it in good order and properly functioning (as a previous poster mentioned regarding his uh, regularity).

A well-regulated militia is one that is practiced in the use of its arms so that it functions properly in an orderly manner - most emphatically NOT one that is subject to close government control. To have such a militia, it is necessary that the private citizens who make up the militia have arms and are trained and well versed in their use ("especially while young," no?); hence the Second Amendment guarantees that those private citizens will not have their arms confiscated.

In response to Robert12:

Adam Smith lived where in America? He contributed to which specific state declaration of rights that the Second Amendment and every other of the first eight amendments were directly based upon? The answer to these two questions are, he did not live in America (thus did not have an American understanding of the Second Amendment's terms), and he had nothing to do with drawing up any of the American bill of rights predecessors or the the Second Amendment itself.

Americans of the Founding Era considered the militia and a standing army to be polar opposites. Attempts to relate the militia to a standing army are counter productive for understanding American Bill of Rights terminology. This is especially so when considering that the American state bills of rights were a new invention in government. No previous bill of rights was intended to limit the power of all government branches.

Why not take a look at the actual American predecessors of the Second Amendment, their authors, and their authors' American understanding of terms in order to determine the Amendment's meaning rather than going overseas? Why the necessity for skipping over all of the actual Americans involved in developing the Second Amendment in order to clarify American Bill of Rights usage? British usage regarding the the term "militia" itself was directly at odds with American usage because militia in Britain referred to a miniscule select militia, while in America militia referred to all able-bodied free men. This is the reason why Americans often equated the militia and the people.

George Mason wrote the first American state Bill of Rights, that of Virginia in 1776. It contained the first such use of well regulated militia language. The other state bills of rights formed from 1776 to the end of the Revolution relied heavily on Mason's first American state bill of rights. Mason also wrote the 1788 model Bill of Rights that James Madison promised to support in order to obtain ratification of the Constitution by Virginia. It contained the first two-clause Second Amendment predecessor. The bills of rights adopted by four state ratifying conventions were fundamentally based on Mason's 1788 model Bill of Rights proposal. Congress was attempting to satisfy the state ratifying conventions by passage of the U.S. Bill of Rights provisions. As a result of all these facts, the U.S. Bill of Rights is actually founded on Mason's 1788 model Bill of Rights and Revolutionary Era language.

Mason understood the self-embodying defensive association he helped form in Fairfax County, Virginia, between August 1774 and April 1775 to be a well regulated militia. Exactly what did that mean to him? Did it mean a government controlled military force? Considering that it was formed as a defense against the actions of government officials and troops, it was actually a guard against and check upon the government by the armed population. To Mason, well regulated militia referred to an effective defensive force of all the able-bodied free men. These men took up their own arms, associated into companies, elected their own officers, and trained themselves for mutual defense against unconstitutional actions of government. The only pre-requirement was that the men have their own arms that they were accustomed to use and thus be able to defend themselves with.

Why not take a look at how George Mason used the phrase well regulated militia since he is the American directly responsible for the first use of well regulated militia in an American bill of rights as well as its use in the first two-clause Second Amendment predecessor? Would it result in too clear an understanding of very plain period American usage to rely on the actual American author and his own American period usage? Robert12 can stick with Adam Smith if he wants to, but as for me, I'll take George Mason's usage any day in attempting to understand George Mason's language.

Those who prefer to know about the Americans who formed American bills of rights and their American usage of terms might be interested in The Founders' View of the Right to Bear Arms; A Definitive History of the Second Amendment. It was just published in December and cited seventeen times to the Supreme Court in the Heller case.

The use of well-regulated to mean orderly, controlled, methodical, etc. by the founders could well be supported by their interest in the science and technology of their day. The chronometer was being developed in the years our nation was founded. No one can argue that a ship's well-regulated chronometer was subject outside control or influence. The opposite is the case as every effort was made to remove, compensate and measure outside influences of nature. Any ship's company who dared adjust, control, or regulate the chronometer after leaving port would be keel-hauled, having endangered all by making longitude fixing moot.

We can also see the orderly meaning in this dispatch from the Mexican-American War, 1846 reporting the US Army taking of Mier, Mexico.

"Mier is by far the most pleasant, cleanly, and well regulated place we have yet seen in this part of Mexico. It is built on a hill overlooking a clear running stream of the same name, three miles from the Rio Grande, and is said to contain 6,000 inhabitants, although I do not know where they stow them all."

One can hardly argue that "well regulated" means under government control given the description is of a town being occupied by a foreign army.

Admittedly, these examples are not from the political context. However, if you use the Moby Thesaurus list of words for "well-regulated" each substitute well both in this context and that of the 2nd Amendment. Whereas, "government controlled", "politically controlled", "state controlled" do not.

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

18 Moby Thesaurus words for "well-regulated":
   arranged, businesslike, formal, habitual, harmonious, in hand,
   methodical, normal, ordered, orderly, regular, routine, steady,
   symmetrical, systematic, uniform, usual, well-ordered

In response to David E. Young:

Mr. Young, thank you very much for your many thoughts here. I truly do appreciate them. I have a copy of both "The Origin of the Second Amendment" and "The Founders' View of the Right to Bear Arms" on the book shelf next to my bed, and agree with most everything that you have said. But...

Where in America did William Blackstone live? Or Algernon Sydney, or Charles Montesquieu, or Emmer De Vattel? I know that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and St. George Tucker referred to these authors quite a bit, and were influenced by their political thoughts, even though they did live across the pond. So, I believe your first point is neither here nor there. I think it’s ridiculous to attempt to credit only those political thoughts generated in America for influencing the creation of our political system. I mention Adam Smith because he is one political philosopher that I seldom see credited with influencing the thoughts of the Founding Fathers, yet after reading his work, which came out well before the Second Amendment, or these other state constitutions that you refer to, (WoN came out in 1775), I believe that he very well could have been influential to those people responsible for creating systems of government at the time.

I suggest you and everyone else go read Smith's thoughts on the militia vs. standing armies in WoN. You will see that Smith did indeed refer to militias as being the true protectors of liberty and that standing armies were something to be feared. Yet, I have never seen Smith credited with holding these views. Why not add another great thinker of the Enlightenment period to the list of those supporters of militias as being the true protectors of personal freedom and liberty?

This post was originally about the meaning of the words "well regulated". Although I appreciate your comments regarding Mason's thoughts on the meaning of "well regulated", I don't see any problem with finding additional support for that meaning in Smith's works. Smith never used "well regulated" to refer to the militia, but in his use of the term to describe the standing army, it is clearly evident that "well regulated" did not mean government controlled or controlled through a miriad of strict legislative acts. From Smith's use of the phrase, "well regulated" clearly meant "well trained", "well disciplined", "effective". Again, why not add another great thinker to the list of those people who are on record, at the time of the creation of these American bills of rights, as having used the phrase "well regulated" to mean something other than "government controlled"?

Many people like to refer to Smith’s works when it comes to the topic of free markets and global economy. He has great respect in this area. But, he also had some very profound thoughts on the proper role of militias and the dangers of standing armies. Why doesn’t he get credit for this in the realm of Second Amendment scholarship?

If Robert12 has any period evidence that Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations actually was relied upon for the language used in any American bill of rights, I am unaware of it but certainly open to look at it.

Josiah Quincy's influential Revolutionary Era pamphlet, Observations on the Boston Port Bill with Thoughts on Civil Societies and Standing Armies, published in May, 1774, in Boston, goes into an extensive argument about standing armies supporting tyranny versus a well regulated militia of the able-bodied men protecting the civil government they have selected. It directly deals with the then current American concerns that led to revolution and the formation of new governments with limiting bills of rights. Quincy's pamphlet and later Revolutionary Era usage of well regulated militia relative to armed defensive associations formed to protect against tyrannical government forces all pre-date Smiths's Wealth of Nations.

Outside of common period usage of standard English terms in normal contexts, little can be learned about American's understanding of American bill of rights terminology or theory from reading The Wealth of Nations. Smith's work preceeded the American bill of rights models as well as the immediate cause of their formation - the American Revolution - and, thus, did not even discuss them.

In my view, "Letters of Marque" means "commissioned privateers", not necessarily private warships.

Well, there is always the connection of "well-regulated" to the Regulars* (i.e. the Regular Army). However, this would introduce a contradiction as militias are typically considered irregular forces.

*"Regulars" meaning "frontline infantry" (or close to it), as opposed to cavalry, artillery, grenadiers, skirmishers, or militia. (Though, the definition of "Regular Army" may include artillery and cavalry.)