Scalia didn't say he was going to go by the 18th Century meanings of words. He said he was going to go by the normal and ordinary use of words by ordinary American citizens.


That was only one of the eleven meanings Johnson's Dictionary gave for the word "arms." How did Scalia ascertain that the most normal and ordinary use of the word "arms" by ordinary American citizens of the founding generation was the one that defined the word as “[b]weapons of offence, or armour of defence?"

According to Samuel Johnson, that particular meaning was deduced from the way Alexander Pope used the word in his translation of Homer's Iliad. Alexander Pope hardly qualifies as an ordinary American citizen of the founding generation.

That was just one of the two meanings of the word, according to Cunningham. Also, it was given that meaning by an English Court in the 1600's. Scalia never said the was going to use "subject matter" to ascertain the meaning of the Second Amendment.



Webster gave four other definitions of the word. Why didn't Scalia use one of those?



Justice Scalia said he was going to go by the normal and ordinary use of words by ordinary American citizens. Timothy Cunningham wasn't even an American.



How does the use of words by the Delaware legislature to make a law qualify as normal and ordinary use by ordinary Americans?



How does the use of words by state courts in judicial opinions qualify as normal and ordinary use by ordinary Americans?



John Trusler wasn't even an American and none of the examples he used were taken from the normal use of words by ordinary Americans.




I'd like to see some evidence that ordinary American citizens of the founding generation normally and ordinarily used the word "arms" to refer to things not even in existent at the time.



I better not find a case where you didn't follow that principle.




That's nice. However, you said you were interpreting the word "arms." Does the word mean "weapons of offence, or armour of defence", "any thing that a man wears for his defence" or some other meaning?

How is a trial judge, using that crap, supposed to determine whether an instrument, such as a lance with its point covered with a deadly strain of flesh eating bacteria, is, or isn't, "bearable arms?"