“To preserve Liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.” (Richard Henry Lee, Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, and member of the first Continental Congress, which passed the Bill of Rights)”
The founding fathers were clear.
Liberals harping on “militia” is straight balls.
You can cherry pick things from history all day Cindi, what ultimately matters is how the court interprets things.
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For instance, when Alexander Hamilton was talking about it in the
Federalist papers, he referred to it being impractical to train the "people at large" to a level of "tolerable expertness," saying that the most that could be "reasonably be aimed at" was "to have them properly armed and equipped" (and that even for that it would be "necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year"). He went on to say:
"But though the scheme of disciplining the whole nation must be abandoned as mischievous or impracticable; yet it is a matter of the utmost importance that a well-digested plan should, as soon as possible, be adopted for the proper establishment of the militia. The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate extent, upon such principles as will really fit them for service in case of need."
He also said "the particular States are to have the SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE APPOINTMENT OF THE OFFICERS" (his caps, not mine).
He explicitly argued that it wouldn't be practical for the people as a whole to be the militia, and said that it would have to be a "select corps of moderate extent" with officers appointed by the States.
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But what you will fail to find in the federal supreme court is any mention of the interpretation put out prior to Heller vs DC about the amendment being an explicit individual right to bear arms. And that largely has to do with how uncontroversial the interpretation of the amendment as being about militias was until the NRA(and black panthers) decided to try and re-interpret it as an individual right.
