[TheForge] Criminal Background Check: way OT

[A Vida]

Peter Hirst wrote:

> "Well regulated" has a pretty specific meaning in the law.  Public utilities 
> are regulated.  The postal service is regulated.  Railroads are regulated. 
> Trucking used to be regulated. 

	AHA!  Here is where you are missing a vital point.  "Regulated" in the 
sense of the 2nd does NOT mean the same thing as in other senses.  It 
very specifically means well TRAINED.  "Well regulated" and "well 
trained" are completely and absolutely equivalent statements.  What do 
you think terms such as "regular army", "regular troops", and "regular 
soldier" refer to?  It refers to *training* - they are trained army, 
troops, soldiers.

	The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, 1989 gives one 
definition of "regulated" as: (b) "Of troops: Properly disciplined" and 
then "discipline" has a definition (3b) applying to the military, 
"Training in the practice of arms and military evolutions; drill. 
Formerly, more widely: Training or skill in military affairs generally; 
military skill and experience; the art of war."

	Here "discipline" refers to training as an equivalent to "scholarship" 
and "learning" and not in the erroneous contemporary usage implying 
"control" from without by some third party, but only that which results 
directly from such training (e.g. being able to hit what you're shooting 
at).

	There has been an awful lot of discussion on this point and it has been 
made very clear that the meaning of "regulation" in this context has 
nothing to do with external political control of the militia, but rather 
its abilities to function properly as a militia in the technical 
military sense. 	

> That's why Scalia had to say the the Militia clause neither restricts nor 
> expands the meaning of the operative clause.  If the operative clause 
> depended on the Milita clause for its present meaning, there is no right to 
> bear arms at all because there is no well regulated Militia any more, other 
> than a branch of the US Army.
> 
> That's why it is a mistake to suppose that the federal limitation of the 
> arms that may be kept and how or when you can bear them that will surely be 
> defined -- and upheld -- in the not too dostant future cases  is  some wacko 
> perversion of Heller.  On the contrary, it flows directly, logically and 
> consistently from Heller.

	Now, if we assume for argument's sake that your definition of 
"regulated" is in fact erroneous vis-a-vis mine in this context, what 
does that do to your argument?