2nd Amendment ---- and other superfluous provisions

[andyfox]

Aymette v. State (1840), involved the constitutionality of a Tennessee law against bowie knives. The court said that the only weapons entitled to constitutional protection were those connected with the militia. Bearing arms, the court concluded, referred to an activity that was exclusively military in nature:

"A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes, might carry his rifle every day, for for forty years, and yet, it would never be said of him, that he borne arms, much less could it be said, that a private citizen bears arms, because he has a dirk, or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane."

Although the court acknowledged that militia weapons were constitutionally protected, it accepted that the state could still regulate the manner in which these weapons might be kept or borne. Weapons that had little connection to military prepareedness were not given any constitutional protection. In the view of the Aymette court, the legislature enjoyed the widest possible latitude to regulate pistols or other weapons that had negligible value in promoting the maintenance of a well-regulated militia.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu...te_v_state.txt

Two years later, in State v. Buzzard, the Arkansas Supreme Court held that the purpose of bearing arms was not to "enable each member of the community to protect and defend by individual force his private rights against every illegal invasion." Protection of this estimable right was intended to "enable the militia to discharge" their important public trust." http://www.guncite.com/court/state/4ar18.html