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Jason_b said: The legal rights of people in DC are different from those in Virginia, a "free state," as mentioned in the 2nd. Same as the States, DC has had militias.

I disagree that the term "the security of a free state" refers only to the states of the union. Our nation has a "Secretary of State" who represents the interests of our nation when it must speak with one voice.

As an example, the United States of Mexico lacks a protected "right of the people to keep and bear arms", it lacks a "well-regulated Militia", and it suffers from vice and corruption which renders it insecure, as indicated by the violence just south of the border. The Second Amendment militia clause is a general statement of the need for a militia, not a reference to specific militias.

Others, the government, lawyers, the police, not I, are the ones who are interpreting "the security of a free state" to refer only to states of the union. The evidence is the fact of gun control in DC. Don't believe for a second it is illegal. You wouldn't see something fall and then try to deny the existence of gravity! You see the gun control----don't try and deny the government has a clever way to have it. The clever way can be deduced by observation. But you can also read cases that indicate vast differences in rights among jurisdicitons. This "general statement for the need" is warm and fuzzy, but in the cruel world of law, it it just wishful thinking.

You said: "Our nation has a "Secretary of State" who represents the interests of our nation when it must speak with one voice."

You are 1/2 right, we do the one voice thing for nations outside the contiguous, Hawaii, Alaska, but internally, we are separate, so separate that DC can have gun control and the States not (though they are working to change that by altering our thinking to think the US is one superstate with the federal government at the apex, it is this we must avert)

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" Our Union in its foreign relations presents itself with all its states and territories as one and indivisible; a garment without a seam; BUT at home we are separate sovereign states of the union. Within the limits of the states, the government of the United States has no powers but those that have been delegated to it."

George Bancroft

"We have in our political system a government of the United States and a government of each of the several states. Each one of these governments is distinct from the others, and each has citizens of its own who owe it allegiance, and whose rights, within its jurisdiction, it must protect. The same person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a state, but his rights of citizenship under one of these governments will be different from those he has under the other."

U. S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875).

We are now watching our citizeship in the United States being overemphasized while our citizenship of our state is deemphasized and reduced to mere resident. It is through this reorganization we will find ourselves with the rights of people of DC. We had better know what rights they have and don't have or we will find ourselves with the same gun control they have and it will be legal. Or we need to revive our state citizenship in a big way. I prefer the latter option.