[Cross-posted from Language Log]
In the comments [at Language Log] on my recent post “The BYU Law corpora,” Dennis Baron writes:
Sorry, J. Scalia, you got it wrong in Heller. I just ran “bear arms” through BYU’s EMne [=Early Modern English] and Founding Era American English corpora, and of about 1500 matches (not counting the duplicates), all but a handful are clearly military.
Baron was one of the signatories to the linguists’ amicus brief in Heller.
Update:
In the comments [on this post at Language Log], Ben Zimmer links to Baron’s article, “Guns and Grammar: the Linguistics of the Second Amendment,” which provides some details about the argument in that brief.