Second Amendment grammar.

• Position: NATIONAL - Brief article

In a landmark decision in 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that ordinary Americans, not just militias*, have the right to keep and bear arms. It was the first time the Court ruled on the central meaning of the Second Amendment, which dates to 1791. And here too, a part of the Court's reasoning hinged on a single punctuation mark-the second comma:

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.

The sentence is a grammatical mess no matter what the punctuation. But the Court's 5-to-4 ruling cited the second comma as evidence that the Framers intended the right...