You know Kly, I find tremendous fault with Scalia's opinion that the 2nd Amendment's prefatory clause (about the militia, etc) has no effect on the amendment's application. Madison included the phrase in his original proposal of it. In fact, the Senate reversed the order of the Amendment's two clauses to emphasize the militia aspect of it. That, in his opinion, Scalia allowed some governmental restrictions on forearms is an affront to strict construction of the Constitution. Of course, it's no surprise that Substantive Due Process is a refuge for both liberals and conservative jurists.
Finding a protected right of self defense in the Second Amendment would be a stretch for strict constructionists too as two states at the time of the convention had included rights to bear arms in their respective declarations of rights that specifically included purposes of hunting and self defense. Yet the Framers excluded that language from the Amendment.
