[andyfox]

"just what 'right of the people' does the 2nd amendment protect, in your mind?

The right of the people to keep and bear arms to use in a well-regulated militia. Just what it says. During the ratification debates, anti-federalists were concerned that without their militias to protect them, the states would be at the mercy of a strong national government which would soon consolidate all power within its orbit. State control of the militia, they said, was necessary to prevent encroachments by the national government on the rights of the states, which should be the true guardians of citizens' rights. All discussion of the right to bear arms was carried on within the contexts of concern over the issue of a standing army and the question of federal control of militias. It was precisely to allay anti-federalists' concerns about the militia that Congress A) rejected Madison's original idea to place what became the 2nd amendment in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, next to other restraints on federal power; and B) recast his language to include the well-regulated militia as a preamble, preamble commonly understood by eighteenth-century lawyers to hold the key to the design and meaning of a law. This reframing of the language (Wacki's pooh-poohing of this notwithstanding) clearly signaled to anti-federalists that the purpose of the amendment was to protect the militia.

Elbridge Gerry was one of the few antifederalists elected to the House of Representatives. When worrying about arms, Gerry never mentioned the threat the government might pose to the rights of individuals to use guns outside militia service. He warned that "whenever government means to invade the rights and liberties ofhte people, they always attempt to destroy the militia." The British had "used every means in their power to prevent the establishment of an effective militia to the eastward." The inclusion of an amendment protecting the right to keep and bear arms was designed to ameliorate the worries Gerry and other antifederalists had about possible future efforts at disarming the militia.

The 2nd amendment doesn't protect the right of the federal government. It protects the people's right to keep and bear arms in a well-regulated militia, which they felt important for a number of reasons, among which was protection from the federal government should it turn tyrannical. The Constitution would result in a much stronger federal government; all parties understood this.