Post #3986 by albaby1 on the US Policy board

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Well, just because "the people's right to keep and bear arms" isn't being used in an artful way to refer only to "the right to form a militia" elsewhere doesn't mean that it didn't mean solely that in the 2A!

True....but not very persuasive. As a super high-level principle of statutory construction, words are typically given their ordinary meaning, unless there's a reason not to give them their ordinary meaning. Some terms are defined, some terms are inarguably used as terms of art ("ex post facto" or "letters of marque and reprisal") - but when a term isn't clearly being used in an artful way, the presumption is that such term just means what it means.

So if "keep and bear arms" had both a common usage meaning and a 'term of art' meaning back in the day, you would use the common usage meaning to construe the 2A, unless there was a very good basis for not doing so.

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