Malcolm Gladwell
speaker
3,484 appearances
51 recordings
16 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard today
Malcolm Gladwell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 22 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 4.
Appearances
Then, after that comma, is what's known as the operative clause, quote, The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
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End of quote.
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We don't use initial being clauses much anymore.
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Moreover, we would almost never use a being clause next to an operative clause, where the two clauses have different subjects.
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That last quirk is what makes the Second Amendment so awkward to our ears.
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We keep expecting that militia, the subject of the initial clause, is
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is also going to be the subject of the main clause.
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And to our grammatical bewilderment it isn't.
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The first half of the Second Amendment is perched on the second half like a top hat on an elephant.
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What does it mean?
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What is the relationship between those two clauses?
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Does the early reference to a militia mean that the right of the people to keep and bear arms applies strictly in the context of military service?
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Or is the reason that the first half has as its subject militia and the second half has as its subject right, that we're supposed to think of them as separate thoughts, with the initial being clause acting as a kind of
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Throat clearing?
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Militias are necessary.
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Also, owning guns is a right.
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For years, this was an open question.
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It was the kind of thing that bookish legal scholars or gun enthusiasts might argue over.
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But the meaning of the Second Amendment wasn't something the Supreme Court spent much time thinking about.
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Showing 141–160 of 3,484 · page 8 of 175
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