10 years after Heller: Fiery gun rights rhetoric, but courts back Second Amendment limits ( Link )
In days past, the "militia" referred to usually took the form of the National Guard. In 2008, the Supreme Court decided the Second Amendment did cover the individual. But they didn't say the "right" was absolute, as the NRA and a few gun nuts might like people to think.
You quoted a op-ed by guys identified as "Eric Tirschwell is the director of litigation and national enforcement policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, and Mark Falsetto is senior counsel, Second Amendment litigation for Everytown." Probably not the most highly extremely unbiased dogs in the fight.
And your take on what the word "militia" has previously meant is wrong. We know what the Founding-Father types thought the word meant because they defined it in the Militia Act of 1792. It assigned to the militia "each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia." 18th century commentators like Spooner (no, not Spat thooner, the other one) understood that the militia was something that was formed organically from the people from the bottom up.
And every one of these guys "shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball"
Every man between 18 and 45 was not only allowed to possess firearms, they were
required to possess them, Swiss style!
"Militia" being therefore definedvery broadly, the 2nd amendment goes on to say "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The Heller decision turns on fact that, when the Constitution says "the people," it really does mean "the people" and not "the States" or "the government." The guys who wrote the Constitution feared what they called "the Mob." But they feared tyranny radiating from centralized power even more. That fear informs the structure of the Federal government from the basement up. It's why there are three explicit branches of government entwined in a tangle of checks and balances. And why they wanted a small army that could only be funded one year at a time and very large militia.
