[John Kilduff]

[ QUOTE ]
"everywhere else in the Constitution, where it says 'the People', it means the people, not "the militia"."

That's because everywhere else it's not necessarily referring to the militia. All able-bodied adult males were required to muster; the militia was a very important part of everyday life. The framers didn't say "able-bodied white males" either, but that's what they meant.

And everywhere else "people" does not mean all the people. Many people were excluded from "we the people."

As for your A and B argument: nobody is saying that there might not be a right of people to have arms for personal use. But that's clearly not what the second amendment is talking about. Nobody at the time was worried that the government was going to take away people's hunting arms. They were worried about the militia either being disarmed or made impotent by a strong federal government with either a national militia, or control over the state militias, or a standing army. The clear intent of the second amendment, as evidenced by its preamble referring to the militia, and by the discussion and debates that occurred at the time, shows that it was clearly intended not to refer to a personal right, but rather in a military sense.

Now it so happens, I believe in a living Constitution. So if you were to argue to me that the words can be applied today so that they can be interpreted as a personal right, I might be more amenable to that argument A(although I believe I would reject it because the clause is not deliberately vague). But to tell me that the original intent of the amendment had a personal rights meaning because clause B does not need clause A to stand alone is erroneous as a study of the context in which the debates about it were discussed.

[/ QUOTE ]

Even if the rightful focus was, and should be, on the preamble (which I doubt, but let's for the sake of argument grant this), the plain words of the 2nd Amendment assert that the right of the People (not the right of the Militia) to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The founders used the word "people" not the word "militia" in the clause that speaks of rights: if they had meant "militia" there, why would they not have used "militia" there???

Moreover it doesn't change things, even if their intent was as you suggest: in the right-to-keep-and-bear clause, they used the word "People" not "Militia", so that's what the clause clearly states. Therefore, the right is assigned to the People, period.

Your argument is like saying, "Well, they wrote "house" but they meant "stable": so, we will replace "house" with "stable" in the second clause, even though in the first clause they did use "stable" where they meant "stable".

I don't believe the founders were such poor writers as to have been incapable of choosing the word that best fit their intended meaning. In the 2nd Amendment, they used "militia" where they meant "militia", and they used "people" where they meant "people". It really isn't more complicated than that. If they had meant "militia" through and through, they would have used that word alone, instead of confounding the issue.

Example again: even if they erred, and really meant "stable" where they wrote "house", they wrote "house: so, house it is. They wrote that the right of the People shall not be infringed. Maybe they meant Militia but they wrote People. It really can't get much clearer than that.

Thanks for your responses, and for reading.