some people also forget to mention these few words, "shall not be infringed". people can debate the meaning of the 2nd amendment all day long, and opposing viewpoints are going to be a constant. here it is... "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." notice the comma, a way of seperating different parts of a sentence. we can debate the well regulated part, but its pretty obvious to me that was referring to the militia. we can then debate the whole militia thing, and many are going to claim that constitutes the national guard. i don't see it that way, but whatever.
The terms "regulated," "militia" and "firearms" carried different, but specific meanings at the time the Second Amendment was debated, worded, and reworded at the Constitutional Convention. The Amendment bears language from several of the states at the time, reflecting compromise. Some states had language in their constitutions at the time that citizens had the right to own firearms for individual defense, but the Founding Fathers decided not to include this in the Amendment though it had been considered.
Not until the 5-4 decision in Heller in 2008 was it ever considered that the Constitution protected an individual right to gun ownership. Prior to that it was the conservative jurists, who primarily opposed this concept as straying from original intent. In fact, during the Heller litigation the NRA tried to persuade the plaintiff from dropping his suit against D.C. because even though they argued for an individual right, they felt that precedent and historical interpretation of the Second Amendment would result in a bad result and make unwanted law.
But keep in mind that the Heller decision, while finding an individual right to gun ownership, does not extend to any right to own assault style weapons, which had previously been banned.
