Jefferson is speaking there of a political-philosophical hypothesis. It's not a statement of fact that laws do, or that the Constitution does, expire after 19 years. Clearly they don't by default.
By all means, let's hold a constitutional convention periodically. Whether it's every 20 years or every 100, we're overdue. The founders even foresaw the potential need for that, and provided a procedure utilizing constitutional conventions to bypass state legislatures, a procedure which the country has not once utilized.
Failure to go through the amendment procedure doesn't grant us the right to ignore the Constitution as written. It's very easy to say you don't like some part of the Constitution. It's very difficult to propose and pass an alternative.
In addition, we could really use a mechanism for the judiciary to declare a law or amendment ambiguous. The legislature gets locked in and catered meals from a random local public school until the judiciary is happy that the new law isn't ambiguous. Apart from DC having the best school lunches in the country, we would also see less vitriolic polarizing arguments. The federal legislature should decide at what point a developing fetus or child gets what rights, and how those should be weighed against the rights of the mother to be free. Because human rights both to life and liberty are a federal thing. And the whether the 2nd amendment is ambiguous due to changes in language or intentional due to disagreement even back then, the judiciary could say "clean this thing up and come back when you have a supermajority, hope you like canned green beans".
What counts as a militia, what does it mean to be well regulated, to what degree does the security of a free state matter, what counts as an arm, what actions counts as bearing them, and what infringes the right to do so?
The amendment is clearly written, but ambiguously worded.
It's not at all clearly written. As written it's simply ungrammatical: the comma after "militia" is a syntax error.
Such nitpicking would ordinarily be unimportant, but given that the purpose of the entire prefatory clause is unclear, it completely undercuts any notion that the entire thing is "one of the more clear written" (as the GP said). It makes it impossible to tell whether it's intended to be a limitation or an explanation (which none of the other amendments have or require).
As you say, many of the words are also ambiguous. But for a piece of law whose interpretation is a matter of tens of thousands of deaths per year, one would expect it to at least be grammatically valid.
How does one person think they know more than the group of people involved in writing it? Your ego is quite strong.
There are no gramatical errors in 2A or any right. None of the terms used are ambiguously defined, try using a legal dictionary instead of saying they’re ambiguous because you don’t understand them.
Militia has a legal definition, as does arms. Bearing them seems clear to me, ability to use them.
Free states are not free to ignore any right enumerated, so that’s a no brainer, same with the loss of rights.
If 2A is ambiguously worded because we want it to define it’s own terms instead of using the standard legal definitions, then what does this make every other right?
It seems to me that it’s being defined ambiguous as an attempt to pick it apart.
There's no such thing as the standard legal definition, most terms, including these, have multiple definitions. Does a militia refer to the organization that is the militia, or does it refer to its members, or to its potential members. At the time of the ratification of the second amendment, the militia was limited to able bodied males over 17, were we supposed to update this to include women as our cultural values shifted or stick with the original definition? For arms, were they going with the definition of any item useable for offense or defense, or were they using the definition of an item a person arms themselves with? Did they mean every weapon of the era, or every weapon that could ever be invented? Is a machine gun an arm? A grenade launcher? A cruise missile? A pipe bomb? A nuke? Does bearing mean the ability to use weapons, or is it the ability to possess weapons, or is it to carry the weapons physically on your person, or is it the more general state of taking up arms, or is it the right to serve in the military? If you are free to use guns but there are restrictions on transferring ownership, has your right to bear arms been infringed? How about if there are no restrictions on gun purchases but there areas where you're not allowed to bring guns, like public buildings? If a school is built in such a way that it is impractical for me to wheel a black powder canon into it, has that infringed my right? Is a noise ordinance that effectively means I can't fire my gun for target practice in my backyard at 2am an infringement?
It's turtles all the way down.
It doesn't matter that you think it means one thing, it's ambiguous because someone else can find a different meaning which to them is equally clear, using different but equally sensible definitions, and there is no way to determine objectively which interpretation is correct.
Most clauses in the constitution are ambiguously worded. This is intentional. The constitution was supposed to be the foundation of America's legal system, not its capstone. The founders easily could have made every amendment a 500 page document detailing exactly and unambiguously what they meant. They instead went with short and concise clauses that would guide future legislation while leaving plenty of room for future leaders to make decisions.
> There's no such thing as the standard legal definition, most terms, including these, have multiple definitions.
That is just blatantly false. Most terms get their legal definitions from case law, or other laws. They are purposefully clear to avoid ambiguity when arguing cases.
> Does a militia refer to the organization that is the militia, or does it refer to its members, or to its potential members. At the time of the ratification of the second amendment, the militia was limited to able bodied males over 17, were we supposed to update this to include women as our cultural values shifted or stick with the original definition?
> For arms, were they going with the definition of any item useable for offense or defense, or were they using the definition of an item a person arms themselves with? Did they mean every weapon of the era, or every weapon that could ever be invented? Is a machine gun an arm? A grenade launcher? A cruise missile? A pipe bomb? A nuke?
Literally all of these are arms, and with the exception of a nuclear bomb, all are legal to own by civilians with proper licensing. (It still amazes me how many pro gun control people think explosives and automatic weapons are illegal.)
You'll notice they drop the "fire" part from 2A and use the generic term "arm", which means yes they intended civilian ownership of all arms encompassing explosives as well.
> Does bearing mean the ability to use weapons, or is it the ability to possess weapons, or is it to carry the weapons physically on your person, or is it the more general state of taking up arms, or is it the right to serve in the military? Is a noise ordinance that effectively means I can't fire my gun for target practice in my backyard at 2am an infringement?
The right says "keep and bear arms", which makes it clear that you can both have them, and use them. Bear is a pretty standard word and is used elsewhere (like in finance) and the legal definition is also quite clear: https://dictionary.findlaw.com/definition/bear.html
Where you get the idea of it's a right to serve in the military is a rather interesting thought.
> If you are free to use guns but there are restrictions on transferring ownership, has your right to bear arms been infringed?
No, how could it be? Restricting transfers does not keep you from owning and using them. If restricting transfers from an FFL dealer to the end customer is what you mean then yes (read you can't buy guns because you've made them impossible to purchase), you absolutely can.
> How about if there are no restrictions on gun purchases but there areas where you're not allowed to bring guns, like public buildings?
Courts are deciding this now, and the first case up after the new guidelines says only federal property. If the local government makes use so complicated as there are no places you can legally carry, then it is a violation of the second amendment. So yes, complicating usage is a violation.
> If a school is built in such a way that it is impractical for me to wheel a black powder canon into it, has that infringed my right?
> Is a noise ordinance that effectively means I can't fire my gun for target practice in my backyard at 2am an infringement?
Now you're getting ridiculous and I won't answer these.
> It doesn't matter that you think it means one thing, it's ambiguous because someone else can find a different meaning which to them is equally clear, using different but equally sensible definitions, and there is no way to determine objectively which interpretation is correct.
If this is how legal terms were decided, on what someone meant or what they thought the term means, then all cases would be chaos.
> Most clauses in the constitution are ambiguously worded. This is intentional. The constitution was supposed to be the foundation of America's legal system, not its capstone. The founders easily could have made every amendment a 500 page document detailing exactly and unambiguously what they meant. They instead went with short and concise clauses that would guide future legislation while leaving plenty of room for future leaders to make decisions.
Or, they removed a lot of the room for future leaders to remove rights they thought were important, because they came from a country with a pseudo-dictator and wanted the people to have a means to escape.
Essentially you've proven me right. You have used some veil of ambiguity to state a particular right is ambiguous, then proceeded to give various scenarios of a gun controllers wish list to hinder this right. You're claiming it's ambiguous so you can pick it apart. The wording is quite clear, people can own and use guns. It only becomes unclear when people want to remove the right.
By all means, let's hold a constitutional convention periodically. Whether it's every 20 years or every 100, we're overdue. The founders even foresaw the potential need for that, and provided a procedure utilizing constitutional conventions to bypass state legislatures, a procedure which the country has not once utilized.
Failure to go through the amendment procedure doesn't grant us the right to ignore the Constitution as written. It's very easy to say you don't like some part of the Constitution. It's very difficult to propose and pass an alternative.