Totally agreed that that was the purpose of the 2nd. It was the express purpose as I wrote above - to prevent state governments from disarming the federal militia. .
Don't be obtuse.
The example I used concerning Benjamin Franklin, was of him raising and arming a militia as a private citizen before any federal gov't existed, against the expressed wishes of the colonial gov't.
Exactly what part of "the right of the people" do you find so difficult to understand????
I doubt that very much, but we'll never know until the SCOTUS speaks to it. But answer this - if banning military weapons is unconstitutional what about the ban on private nukes? You can't say it's different because we are talking legal interpretation. Either US law does or does not permit the regulation of weapons, and the SCOTUS has always said it does.
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Once again, don't be obtuse..............the weapons protected are weapons for personal use, that the bearer uses and trains himself to use with skill (which, btw, is the meaning of "well regulated" in the parlance of the day) Nukes are not personal weapons, and by definition one does not practice and learn skills with them..................
SCOTUS does not grant rights, if SCOTUS tomorrow ruled there was no right to bear arms, or to freedom of religion, or to free speech.....they would simply be wrong. The rights would still exist.
Jefferson was just a politician. His word is not the law. It doesn't work like that. We know that Yanks have an extraordinary reverence for their politicians for a supposedly "free" democracy, but the common law does not work like that and the US is a legal system based on the British common law.
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Jefferson was more than merely "a politician". He was in France while the Constitution was written, but he was in close touch with his alter ego, James Madison, and they thought with one mind.
If you wish to delve the meaning of the Bill of Rights, you have to seek understanding of the minds of the men that were involved in its creation.
