One of the questions surrounding the Second Amendment is, what exactly is a "well regulated" militia? So, what did the phrase "well regulated" mean at the time? The Oxford English Dictionary has a sample. Gibbon used it twice.
Google now has a tool available which tracks words or phrases over time, from 1800 to 2000. Not quite ideal for this purpose, but useful enough. http://www.npr.org/2010/12/16/132106374/google-book-tool-tracks-cultural-change-with-words The viewer is at http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/, and I'll let you run your own searches. Also click on the year spans and see some examples of the use of your phrase. There's more information at http://wendymcelroy.com/news.php?item.3685.3 I'm sure the attorneys can think of other words and phases to try. (Or should that be "Words and Phrases"?) -- Charles Curley /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign Looking for fine software \ / Respect for open standards and/or writing? X No HTML/RTF in email http://www.charlescurley.com / \ No M$ Word docs in email Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0 809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
