74 Books and arts The EconomistJune 9th 2018
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HAT does it mean to “bear arms”?
The Second Amendment to Ameri-
ca’s constitution reads: “A well regulated
Militia, being necessary to the security of
a free State, the right of the people to keep
and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Concerned by the number of firearms in
America, and the epidemic of gun vio-
lence they cause, many commentators
(including Johnson) have in the past ex-
amined the first half of the amendment. It
seems obvious to some that the first
clause qualifies the second: the right to
bear arms is tied to militia service.
But gun-rights advocates think the sec-
ond clause stands alone. Among them
was the late Antonin Scalia, who in 2008
wrote a Supreme Court opinion, DCv
Heller,holding that the amendment guar-
antees an individual right to guns, no mi-
litia service required. He went on to ex-
plain “bear arms”. For him, “to bear” was
simple enough, meaning “to carry”. And
“arms” were just weapons. He conceded
that there was an idiom, “to bear arms”,
which meant to belong to an organised
military force. But thiswas only a possible
import of the phrase, not its core meaning.
Scalia was an originalist—ie, he be-
lieved the constitution must be interpret-
ed in the light of the meaning of its constit-
uent words in the late 18th century. He
bolstered his argument by citing an edi-
tion of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary from
1773, plus selected prose from the period
in which the constitution was written.
He was mistaken. Selective quotations
can prove anything, if you have clever re-
searchers looking for them. But there is a
far more robust way to find out what peo-
ple meant by this or that word in the 18th
century. That is to gather a large number
of texts into a “corpus”, a searchable body
of material, and then look for patterns in
thousands of uses of a word or phrase. Acorpus can be general, like Google Books,
which has around 500bn words of English
text. But it can also be specialised. Two
newcomers are the Corpus of Founding
Era American English, with 139m words
across 95,000 documents from 1760 to 1799,
and the Corpus of Early Modern English,
with 1.3bn words from 1475 to 1800.
Dennis Baron, a linguist at the Universi-
ty of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, searched
for “bear arms” in these databases, and
found about 1,500 instances. Of these, he
says, only a handful did not refer to organ-
ised armed action. It is true that several
state constitutions guaranteed the right to
“bear arms” and explicitly mentioned self-
defence. So Mr Baron’s digging does not
completely close the case. But it has shown
that the default meaning of “bear arms” in
the founding era was, indeed, military.
This research ought to prompt the jus-
tices to revisitHeller—though given the
weight of precedent and the court’smake-up, that is unlikely. Still, thedispute
has several other interesting lessons. One
is that phrases are more than the sum of
their dictionary definitions. Context isn’t
just helpful; it is often crucial. The verb
“bear” has 44 definitions in the Oxford
English Dictionary (OED), not counting
the ursine noun. Which “bear” is meant
can only be grasped in context. Bearing in-
terest does not mean literally carrying in-
terest around, nor does bearing a grudge
involve physical activity.
Second, there are phrases, sometimes
called “phrasal verbs”, that cannot be un-
derstood by knowing the component
words: considerbear downorbear up.
Good dictionaries define these phrases
separately. The OED defines “bear arms”
in an entry under “arms”: “To serve as a
soldier; to fight (for a country, cause, etc).”
But it also takes note of the contested
meaning in America’s constitution.
In any event, real-world usage matters
more than dictionaries. Judges often hunt
through dictionaries to support their rul-
ings, but these can missnuances or make
mistakes. Instead judges should go di-
rectly to digital corpora. Nor are selected
quotes enough. In any other field, this
would be called cherry-picking. Instead,
with the powerful, free resources now
available, anyone—including readers of
this column—can look at a huge body of
usages and draw firmer conclusions
about meaning. (Neal Goldfarb, a lawyer,
has made the “bear arms” data available
on Language Log, a blog.)
Originalists like Scalia can find out
what words really meant in the 18th cen-
tury. But their opponents—who believe
laws should evolve with the meanings of
the underlying concepts—get a powerful
tool, too. Lexicographers have revolution-
ised their work using such data. Time for
lawyers to do the same.Johnson Arms and the man
Big data can illuminate legal controversies—including over the Second Amendmentnor, sailed for England. Delays caused by
war, storms and other catastrophes meant
it was three years before he was able to
make it back. By then, the colony—which
included his granddaughter, Virginia Dare,
the first English child born in North Ameri-
ca, according to legend—had vanished,
leaving only a few tantalising clues behind.
Thus begins the second part of this saga:
the fruitless search for answers—and the
strange form of madness that seems to
overcome anyone who gets too close to the
subject. “The Lost Colony has a kind of in-
exorable pull, like a black hole,” a research-
er tells Mr Lawler. But if the hunt itself is amatter of “chasing ghosts”, Mr Lawler is on
firmer ground in his effort to explain its
hold on the American imagination. Above
all, the legend of the Lost Colony fulfils the
need for an origin story, one that is all the
more powerful for its pathos.
Still, it is an origin story of an exclusion-
ary, even racist, cast. Given the devastation
wrought on native populations, the obses-
sive focus on a handful of Anglo-Saxon set-
tlers—including, most poignantly, the in-
fant Virginia—is overblown. The notion
that America began here, in the bogs and
shifting sands of Roanoke Island, provides
a distinctly Waspy pedigree for a nationwith a far more complicated heritage.
Mr Lawler is an intrepid guide to this
treacherous territory. When he attempts to
track down one of the most controversial
artefacts associated with the Lost Colony,
he confesses: “No scholar in his right mind
would risk his reputation on the Dare
Stone, which by now was academically ra-
dioactive. Fortunately, I was no scholar.”
This can-do spirit serves him well. His will-
ingness to chase down every lead, no mat-
ter how outlandish, and his enthusiasm for
the journey as much as the destination,
make “The Secret Token” a lively and en-
gaging read. 7