Originally posted by BlueSky:

I don't "have a problem" with anything in the Constitution. I merely disagree with some of my fellow citizens on the actual meaning of a certain passage.

The passage says "a well-regulated militia", and "the entire populace of able bodied citizens capable of being called up to military service" is hardly a reasonable definition of "well-regulated".

Look, they could hardly have made the meaning more difficult to interpret had they tried. Unless we figure out a way to exhume the Founding Fathers and ask for clarification, we'll never know what they actually meant.

You may be right. But then I may be right too.

I don't see how there's any, any, any contradiction between reading the second clause as a -- as a personal guarantee and reading the first one as assuring the existence of a militia, not necessarily a State-managed militia because the militia that resisted the British was not State- managed. But why isn't it perfectly plausible, indeed reasonable, to assume that since the framers knew that the way militias were destroyed by tyrants in the past was not by passing a law against militias, but by taking away the people's weapons -- that was the way militias were destroyed. The two clauses go together beautifully: Since we need a militia, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.