I’m working on it.

I appreciate your award, and what you are saying.

But still, I sometimes wish I could award you an editor…

Read on its own, the Second Amendment is confusing, and the door is open for twisting its meaning. But when considering the Bill of Rights in its entirety, things become clear. It’s not titled “The Bill of Rights” for nothing…..

All nine other Amendments in the Bill of Rights clearly pertain to protecting the rights of individuals. So why would they throw one oddball state’s right into this Bill?”

Although technically not a modern legal observation in the traditional sense (it’s a shame that so many modern legal observations are totally devoid of tradition, but, c’est la vie), it is an extremely acute and logical psychological and political observation about what the framers were shooting for (pun intended). After all, all rights not expressly given in the Bill of Rights to the Federal Government are reserved for the States, and the people. (Also such matters shall not prejudice the States.) In other words, if it is not expressly a right granted to the Federal Government, then by not mentioning it, it goes to either the States (for them to conclude) or for the people, by default. By their own logic (the tenth) the framers would not have even had to mention the idea had they not been intending to publicly implicate and imprint the matter as a de facto limitation not upon either the States or the people, but upon the Federal government. Just like the other amendments, all that would have really need to have been said, was the tenth, it being the legal and philosophical Coda encapsulating the entire purpose of limited government. (All the other rights are implied in the tenth.) But they saw fit to imply that certain individual rights were worth mentioning conspicuously enough and publicly enough as to leave no doubt of the full implications of the tenth. Or as Ron put it, it is a right expressly drawn to the people, as the Tenth implies by exclusion, linguistically, philosophically, governmentally, politically (in the widest sense of the term), and Constitutionally. Or put yet another way, what they did say was (negatively) since we’re mentioning it in writing, the Federal government has no fundamental business in this matter, it is one reserved for the people. You correctly deduced that because the Tenth restricts by exclusion what powers are granted the Federal government, and since the rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights are publicly mentioned to defend against encroachment of government upon individual liberties (that is to say, practically speaking, States don’t really have Rights, they have powers), then by implication they (the Rights declared) are all related in functional aspect.

So, I award you the Hawkeye Farsight, First Class.
Use it well my friend.
Use it well.

I think the stronger question is, if they wanted to write, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of a well regulated Milita to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” why didn’t they?

Lets reword it a bit.

“A well fed Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and eat food, shall not be infringed.”

The question? Does the revised wording mean only active mility/ military personal have the right to keep and eat food?

Miller did not find that the individual did not have a right to bear arms (ostensibly because the person was not a part of a militia). What they found was that the weapon in question (Sawed-off Shottie) was unsuitable for being a part of the militia, and as such, the weapon (not the person) was not covered by the 2A.

IOW, the correct interpretation of Miller is that the second amendment only protects the rights of the people to own military style weapons.

Thus, owning an M-16 is protected, but owning a cross-bow isn’t.

There are many arguments, such as other writings by the framers, constitutions of various states, etc, that support the view that the Second Amendment was intended to cover individual rights. But setting all those aside, I think context alone makes their true intentions clear.

Read on its own, the Second Amendment is confusing, and the door is open for twisting its meaning. But when considering the Bill of Rights in its entirety, things become clear. It’s not titled “The Bill of Rights” for nothing…..

All nine other Amendments in the Bill of Rights clearly pertain to protecting the rights of individuals. So why would they throw one oddball state’s right into this Bill?

IMO, the argument that the Second Amendment was intended to give the states the right to maintain their own militias makes no sense whatsoever when considered in the context of the Bill of Rights as a whole.

The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free state.

But that doesn’t help because you are creating an absolute for an unclear reason a well-regulated militia – whatever that means. There’s no mention of “militias controlled by the individual states.”

Sounds to me like Handsome may have failed the “well regulated” part but Gerstein stretched to ban guns.