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You're correct, the second amendment wasn't "required".

The people who pushed for it - it's safe enough to conclude - thought otherwise. Therefore, their views as to its meaning and scope are entitled to some degree of consideration.

So let's follow the logic. You're saying that the purpose of the amdendment was to protect the people's right to form a militia. And at #515 you implied that the reason for that protection was so that Congress would be able to use the militia to fulfill the purposes of the original militia clause, not to protect against tyrannical government. My question to you is why the people pushing for the amendment felt that the security of a free state would be threatened absent such an amendment, given that the Constitution already contained a militia clause? Were they just hallucinating a fear that had no rational basis at all?

But its presence, and its military wording (keep and bear arms), has been construed by the courts as having a distinct and unique relationship to a militia.

Unfortunate as that is. That just points to a much deeper problem, which is that too many people just accept whatever the courts say about the Constitution. See tagline.

"Possess and carry guns and sharp, pointy things" might have been better.

How about "keep and bear arms in defense of one's home, one's neighbors, and one's country"? One thing that's clear is that the Founders didn't anticipate how ignorant this country would become about what they were writing.

"My question to you is why the people pushing for the amendment felt that the security of a free state would be threatened absent such an amendment, given that the Constitution already contained a militia clause?"

First of all, thank God for the BOR. I don't know where we'd be without them.

The militia clause in the U.S. Constitution dealt with calling forth and arming the militia "to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions". Article I, Section 8, said nothing about the people having their own arms, or the people using those arms to protect their state.

I think the amendment was written to prevent a tyrannical government from disarming the people, and only arming them to "execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions".

The big problem was the creation of a standing army and the formation of the reserves and the National guard. There are no "state militias" anymore, and that makes the court's interpretations ludicrous.

For example, in Miller, the court ruled that evidence wasn't presented to show that a shotgun was an allowable military weapon. Yet the 1994 AWB disallowed military-style weapons because they were.