In other words, "bearing arms" and "military service in person" were treated as synonymous. Later, the conscientious-objector clause was dropped and the phrasing was further whittled down to its final form. But the preamble continued to explain what the Framers had in mind, "a well-regulated Militia" to maintain the "security of a free State."
For generations, the U.S. Supreme Court and lesser courts interpreted the Second Amendment within this context of a collective right of the people to defend the security of their states and country, not a libertarian right for a mob of insurrectionists to possess guns for killing government officials.
Only in modern times, with the lobbying from an increasingly extreme National Rifle Association, has that anarchic view taken hold, gaining limited acceptance in 2008 when five right-wing justices on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned longstanding precedents and asserted a limited individual right to own a gun for self-protection.
However, some on the extreme Right continue to push the envelope, arguing that the Framers wanted individual fighters for "liberty" to have the capacity to inflict massive harm on fellow American citizens and to destroy the nation's "domestic Tranquility."
Further, these gun-rights extremists maintain that neither the states nor federal government can do anything to protect the safety of citizens and the security of the nation because the Framers, through the Second Amendment, tied the country's hands. This right-wing interpretation of the Second Amendment rests on some very bad history or perhaps a willful misinterpretation of the Framers' intent, which was to establish the rule of law within an orderly Republic.
This dishonesty (or ignorance) from the Right will be on display during the upcoming congressional debate. You can detect the fraud when Sen. Cruz and other Tea Partiers insist on dropping the first half of the Second Amendment. [For more on this history, see Consortiumnews.com's "More Second Amendment Madness."]
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