Gun Quotes : Militia Dependent
the right of the people to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed. ❞
Another common wrong-headed argument is that "you’d have to be in the militia to qualify for the 2nd’s protections".
But they’re failing at English and what many English scholars have said about that argument. The "well regulated militia" phrase is an "nominative absolute” phrase which can be ignored. It is merely explanatory (descriptive) and dependent on the rest of the sentence (not the rest of the sentence is a dependent clause on it). Since you ignore nominative/descriptive clauses, the 2nd can be read, "The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.”
No one would read THAT as you have to be a well-schooled electorate in order to keep and read books. The right to keep and read books must not be infringed, so we can all participate in a well schooled electorate.
"Shall not be infringed" is not the type of wording one puts in, when something is conditionally dependent on something else.
Historical Context
Remember the history: the colonists', war of independence was started when the British army marched on Lexington and Concord to try to enforce a recently-passed 'assault weapons' ban. Paul Revere's ride with "the British are coming”, doesn’t make sense out of context: the British Regulars had been in America all along. (We were British). The point of the cry was to warn everyone that, "the British military was coming to take away our guns!” The king had said we did not need our own arms, we must trust the king's army to protect us! (Which means the ability to defend ourselves, and self determine our own fates as free men). And that’s much of what started the revolutionary war (and the shot heard ‘round the world’).
This nation was founded on freedoms (including gun freedoms), and to guaranteed no more encroachments on individual liberties. The founders felt that government/politicians would be less likely to infringe on the rights of individuals knowing that they might be shot for doing so, or that corrupt laws could be resisted if politicians passed them anyways. That’s why they didn’t create standing armies (in times of peace), but only armies in times of need. We may have evolved to allow standing armies later, but that doesn’t change the intent for individual liberty of self-defense, nor eliminate the rights of the people to have their own guns. What are the odds the 2nd protection of liberty that these folks write into the constitution, is going to say, "we just fought a war over protecting our right to self defense and determination, but in the future, we want people to only be able to own guns if they are part of our army/militia". It's not only a wrong argument, it's historically non-sensical.
To remove any doubt of that, here's quotes that back up what they were thinking:
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Those don't sound like quotes from people likely to say "only those beholden to the State Military should be able to own guns". Separatists that had been driven out of England, then driven into war with England (the largest power in the world), were damn well not going to make the mistakes of becoming slaves/wards of their new government by saying only government drones could have guns.