I don't think you can separate the idea of gun ownership from the notion of the militia as an organized force capable of resisting say, the standing force of government. I will agree that if the practical effect of gun laws is to disarm the people, then it must be resisted. So, following Justice Storey, I think, I regard the possession of guns as a popular rather than an individual right. Hard to enforce this right in as court, however, since a court is an arm of government.
You certainly can say that the notion of militia has evolved into state and local police forces - comprised of professionals rather than the "ordinary citizenry". In this case, the 2nd amendment exact original intent isn't the case here, tho I would argue that individual citizens can be considered an "adjunct" to official law enforcement, and that we can now claim that the 2nd amendment protects our individual right (as opposed to only "collective") right to own guns.
I think, I regard the possession of guns as a popular rather than an individual right.
I'd have to disagree there. That argument has been used by the gun control crowd, that doesn't realize that society does change, and the specific terms and meanings of words will change with it. The Founders were against tyranny of all sorts, and, to them, an armed citizenry really meant individual citizens, not some amorphous collective.
I don't think you can separate the idea of gun ownership from the notion of the militia as an organized force capable of resisting say, the standing force of government.
I regard the possession of guns as a popular rather than an individual right.
Well you're in with some pretty poor company on this site, rob.. -- And even worse on the national scene.
This quote says it all:
"All too many of the other great tragedies of history -- Stalin's atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few -- were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars."