Chapter 3 - A Clear and Present Danger

Summary

The clash between the First and Second amendments in the US Constitution – the First guaranteeing free speech and the Second guaranteeing the right to bear arms – leads into a discussion of legal interpretations of the Second Amendment from 1791, when the states ratified the Bill of Rights, to the present. Using a corpus linguistic analysis of the Second Amendment, with a focus on "the right to keep and bear arms," and an examination of the US Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), we see that, just like any other text, whether a literary work, a sacred book, or an everyday communication like a memo or shopping list, legal interpretation is always contingent, always subjective, and and always subject to reinterpretation.