WA Gun Law: Spotsylvania Case Against VA Dems' "Assault Weapon" Ban (in Curtis v. Katz) is Brilliant and Airtight

I'm not a lawyer, but it is a pretty sweet argument.

Here's the relevant clause of the VA constitution:

Article I. Bill of Rights
Section 13. Militia; standing armies; military subordinate to civil power

That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

My argument (not that it matters) was less clever:

Even if the antecedent (or false antecedent) is taken as operant, and even if the right is conditional, and even though we have no militia (in the ordinary contemporary sense) anymore, that doesn't matter. In that case, the right is made conditional on the fact that the militia is the proper, right, natural and safe defense of a free state--not on the actual existence of a militia. The mere fact that we have no militia (in the ordinary sense) is irrelevant to whether a militia is proper, right, natural and/or safe. 

   

   But here's WAGL's short, interesting discussion of the much more important argument in Curtis v. Katz: