The Conclusion is certainly dead on.
VI. Conclusion
The second amendment to the Constitution had two objectives. The first purpose was to recognize in general terms the importance of a militia to a free state. This recognition derives from the very core of Classical Republican thought; its "constituency" among the Framers was found primarily among conservatives, particularly Virginia's landed gentry. Indeed, prior to Virginia's proposal, no federal ratifying convention had called for such recognition. The second purpose was to guarantee an individual right to own and carry arms. This right stemmed both from the English Declaration of Rights and from Enlightenment sources. Its primary supporters came from the Radical-Democratic movement, whether based among the small farmers of western Pennsylvania or the urban mechanics of Massachusetts. Only by incorporating both provisions (p.60)could the first Congress reconcile the priorities of Sam Adams with those of George Mason, and lessen the "disquietude" both of the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts minorities and those of the Virginia and New York majorities. The dual purpose of the second amendment was recognized by all early constitutional commentators;[264] the assumption that the second amendment had but a single objective is in fact an innovation born of historical ignorance.
The distinction between the second amendment's purposes enables us to avoid the pitfalls of the collective rights view, which would hold that the entire amendment was meant solely to protect a "collective right" to have a militia.[265] The militia component of the second amendment was not meant as a "right", collective or individual, except in the sense that structural provisions (e.g., requirements that money bills originate in the House, or military appropriations not exceed two years) are considered collective "rights." Indeed, the militia component was meant to invoke the exertion of governmental power over the citizen, to inspire it to require citizens to assume the burdens of militia duty. In this respect it differs radically from any other provision of the Bill of Rights. To read what was a recognition of an individual right, the right to arms, as subsumed within the militia recognition is thus not only permitting the tail to wag the dog, but to annihilate what was intended as a right.[266] As the one (p.61)provision of the Bill of Rights which encourages rather than restricts governmental action, the militia component's terms were necessarily vague and its phrasing a reminder rather than a command.[267]
The right to arms portion of the second amendment, in contrast, was meant to be a prohibition, as fully binding as those in the remainder of the Bill of Rights. Madison intended that the second amendment be read as incorporating the individual rights proposals put forward by the Pennsylvania minority and by Sam Adams and the New Hampshire convention. Judging from contemporary discussion in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, he succeeded.[268] If either clause can be accorded primacy, it is the right to arms clause; only in Virginia, at the eleventh hour of the ratification process, was a militia clause appended to a federal bill of rights proposal.
Reading the entirety of the second amendment as militia-related, based upon some contemporary references to the need for constitutional (p.62)recognition of the militia concept, confuses the purpose of one provision with the text of another. The second amendment, in short, cannot be explained simply as a last avowal of the classical ideal, as "the last act of the Renaissance."[269] Rather, it is a bridge between the decline of that ideal and the rise of the liberal democracy. Part of the second amendment looks backward to the worlds of Polybius and Machiavelli; but part looks forward, to the worlds of Jefferson and Jackson. Only a recognition of the dual nature of the second amendment will enable us to give meaning to the aspirations of Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams as well as those of George Mason.[270]
"The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals...[I]t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of." -- Albert Gallatin to Alexander Addison, Oct 7, 1789, MS. in N.Y. Hist. Soc.-A.G. Papers, 2
"The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by rule of construction be conceived to give Congress the power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if in blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both." -- William Rawle, 1825