It was meant to allow the people to maintain "the security of a free state" literally against the other states.
In Federalist #8, Alexander Hamilton was afraid that each state would raise its own army to defend against neighboring states:
The institutions chiefly alluded to are STANDING ARMIES and the correspondent appendages of military establishments. Standing armies, it is said, are not provided against in the new Constitution; and it is therefore inferred that they may exist under it. Their existence, however, from the very terms of the proposition, is, at most, problematical and uncertain. But standing armies, it may be replied, must inevitably result from a dissolution of the Confederacy. Frequent war and constant apprehension, which require a state of as constant preparation, will infallibly produce them. The weaker States or confederacies would first have recourse to them, to put themselves upon an equality with their more potent neighbors. They would endeavor to supply the inferiority of population and resources by a more regular and effective system of defense, by disciplined troops, and by fortifications. They would, at the same time, be necessitated to strengthen the executive arm of government, in doing which their constitutions would acquire a progressive direction toward monarchy. It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.The expedients which have been mentioned would soon give the States or confederacies that made use of them a superiority over their neighbors. Small states, or states of less natural strength, under vigorous governments, and with the assistance of disciplined armies, have often triumphed over large states, or states of greater natural strength, which have been destitute of these advantages. Neither the pride nor the safety of the more important States or confederacies would permit them long to submit to this mortifying and adventitious superiority. They would quickly resort to means similar to those by which it had been effected, to reinstate themselves in their lost pre-eminence. Thus, we should, in a little time, see established in every part of this country the same engines of despotism which have been the scourge of the Old World. This, at least, would be the natural course of things; and our reasonings will be the more likely to be just, in proportion as they are accommodated to this standard.
In Federalist #29, Alexander Hamilton argues that the militia is a counter-force to standing armies:
If a well-regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security. If standing armies are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia, in the body to whose care the protection of the State is committed, ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions...James Madison, Federalist #46:"The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.
But though the scheme of disciplining the whole nation must be abandoned as mischievous or impracticable; yet it is a matter of the utmost importance that a well-digested plan should, as soon as possible, be adopted for the proper establishment of the militia. The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate extent, upon such principles as will really fit them for service in case of need. By thus circumscribing the plan, it will be possible to have an excellent body of well-trained militia, ready to take the field whenever the defense of the State shall require it. This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist...
Where in the name of common-sense, are our fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens? What shadow of danger can there be from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits and interests?
But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole...You cite recent SCOTUS rulings, I cite two actual Framers of the Constitution writing about the intent of a militia of the People and its need to be as comparably armed as a standing army. That does mean "any and all weapons for any purpose" that a standing army ruled by a despotic tyrant might desire.That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism...
Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger...
To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties...
Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of...
Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it.
-PJ
Nobody adopted the anonymous Federalist Papers as state or federal law. Every state explicitly adopted the English Common Law.
New YorkConstitution of New York — 1777
XXXV. And this convention doth further, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this State, ordain, determine, and declare that such parts of the common law of England, and of the statute law of England and Great Britain, and of the acts of the legislature of the colony of New York, as together did form the law of the said colony on the 19th day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, shall be and continue the law of this State, subject to such alterations and provisions as the legislature of this State shall, from time to time, make concerning the same. That such of the said acts, as are temporary, shall expire at the times limited for their duration respectively. That all such parts of the said common law, and all such of the said statutes and acts aforesaid, or parts thereof, as may be construed to establish or maintain any particular denomination of Christians or their ministers, or concern the allegiance heretofore yielded to, and the supremacy, sovereignty, government, or prerogatives claimed or exercised by, the King of Great Britain and his predecessors, over the colony of New York and its inhabitants, or are repugnant to this constitution, be, and they hereby are, abrogated and rejected. And this convention doth further ordain, that the resolves or resolutions of the congresses of the colony of New York, and of the convention of the State of New York, now in force, and not repugnant to the government established by this constitution, shall be considered as making part of the laws of this State; subject, nevertheless, to such alterations and provisions as the legislature of this State may, from time to time, make concerning the same.
As for SCOTUS, when they rule, it is the law, like it or not. When they ruled abortion is a constitutional right, I thought them wrong, but the law of the land was that no state could prohibit abortion. When SCOTUS ruled that abortion is a matter of state jurisdiction, I thought them correct, but what I thought did not matter. What they ruled became the law.
The United States adopted the Constitution, not God's law. I suppose you could always try arguing to a court that God's law preempts any provision of the Constitution you happen to disfavor. Whose God would you shove down the throat of all Americans? Perhaps the Roman Catholic God, as that is the one true religion. Perhaps the Jewish G-d, and they are G-d's chosen people. Someone will have to break it to divorcing women that they need to get a get or they will get got. Catholics may do eternity for reading the bible of King James. It can't be the Protestants as they are all heretics. Perhaps Allah of the Muslims.
The First Amendment, that was actually adopted, sought to remove government from religion. Buy the will of the people, there can be no official religion, much less anyone's version of Gods law preempting the Constitution.
You cite recent SCOTUS rulings, I cite two actual Framers of the Constitution writing about the intent of a militia of the People and its need to be as comparably armed as a standing army. That does mean "any and all weapons for any purpose" that a standing army ruled by a despotic tyrant might desire.
Yes, I link, cite and quote actual law from the U.S. Supreme Court. You cite quotes that are irrelevant nonsense to constitutional or statutory interpretation.
"A Matter of Interpretation," Federal Courts and the Law, by Antonin Scalia, 1997. This book contains an essay by Antonin Scalia and responses to that essay by professors Ronald Dworkin, Mary Ann Glendon, Laurence Tribe, and Gordon Wood. There is a final response by Antonin Scalia.
To demonstrate the breadth of legal agreement on this point, I quote from Laurence Tribe and Antonin Scalia.
Laurence Tribe, pp. 65-6
Let me begin with my principal area of agreement with Justice Scalia. Like him, I believe that when we ask what a legal text means — what it requires of us, what it permits us to do, and what it forbids — we ought not to be inquiring (except perhaps very peripherally) into the ideas, intentions, or expectations subjectively held by whatever particular persons were, as a historical matter, involved in drafting, promulgating, or ratifying the text in question. To be sure, those matters, when reliably ascertainable, might shed some light on otherwise ambiguous or perplexing words or phrases — by pointing us, as readers, toward the linguistic frame of reference within which the people to whom those words or phrases were addressed would have "translated" and thus understood them. But such thoughts and beliefs can never substitute for what was in fact enacted as law. Like Justice Scalia, I never cease to be amazed by the arguments of judges, lawyers, or others who proceed as though legal texts were little more than interesting documentary evidence of what some lawgiver had in mind. And, like the justice, I find little to commend the proposition that anyone ought, in any circumstances I can imagine, to feel legally bound to obey another's mere wish or thought, or legally bound to act in accord with another's mere hope or fear.
Antonin Scalia, responding to Dr. Tribe, p. 133
He is correct that we both regard as irrelevant the intentions of the drafters....
At page 30, Scalia quoted from Aldridge v. Williams, 44 U.S. 9, 24 (1845):
In expounding this law, the judgment of the court cannot, in any degree, be influenced by the construction placed upon it by individual members of Congress in the debate which took place on its passage, nor by the motives or reasons assigned by them for supporting or opposing amendments that were offered. The law as it passed is the will of the majority of both houses, and the only mode in which that will is spoken is in the act itself; and we must gather their intention from the language there used, comparing it, when any ambiguity exists, with the laws upon the same subject, and looking, if necessary, to the public history of the times in which it was passed.
Beginning on page 30 Scalia writes:
Extensive use of legislative history in this country dates only from about the 1940s. It was still being criticized by such respected justices as Frankfurter and Jackson as recently as the 1950s. Jackson, for example, wrote in one concurrence:I should concur in this result more readily if the Court could reach it by analysis of the statute instead of by psychoanalysis of Congress. When we decide from legislative history, including statements of witnesses at hearings, what Congress probably had in mind, we must put ourselves in the place of a majority of Congressmen and act according to the impression we think this history should have made on them. Never having been a Congressman, I am handicapped in that weird endeavor. That process seems to me not interpretation of a statute but creation of a statute.
The Jackson quote is taken from U.S. v. Public Utilities Comm'n, 345 U.S. 295 (1953) at 319.
In his essay in Scalia's book, at page 68, Tribe writes,
Like nearly everyone, I agree, for instance, that the Supreme Court's 1954 decision that official school segregation by race violates equal protection correctly interprets what the Fourteenth Amendment says (and always said) — even though it may well defy what the amendment's authors and ratifiers expected the amendment to do - and indeed I agree that the authors and ratifiers themselves may well have intended to enact a provision that might, in light of its broad language and its uncertain reach, end up condemning some of what they then regarded as entirely just and proper.
Robert Bork, 75, 81-2, in "The Tempting of America" wrote:
Brown was a great and correct decision....Let us suppose that Plessy v. Ferguson correctly represented the original understanding of the fourteenth amendment, that those who ratified it intended black equality, which they demonstrated by adopting the equal protection clause. But they also assumed that equality and state-compelled separation of the races were consistent, an assumption which they demonstrated by leaving in place various state laws segregating the races. Let us also suppose, along with the Court in Plessy, as I think we must, that the ratifiers had no objection to the psychological harm segregation inflicted. If those things are true, then it is impossible to square the opinion in Brown with the original understanding. It is, however, entirely possible to square the result in Brown with that understanding....
By 1954, when Brown came up for decision, it had been apparent for some time that segregation rarely if ever produced equality. Quite aside from any question of psychology, the physical facilities provided for blacks were not as good as those provided for whites. That had been demonstrated in a long series of cases....
Since equality and segregation were mutually inconsistent, though the ratifiers did not understand that, both could not be honored. When that is seen, it is obvious the Court must choose equality and prohibit state-imposed segregation. The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the text.
One problem with quoting what some Framers discussed is that the people never ratified Framer discussions. They ratified the black letter text of the Constitution itself. Neither Framers nor the Federal legislature ratified the Constitution or any of its amendments. That was done by States.
The purported intent of the lawgiver is irrelevant if the actual words of the law have a clear meaning. The words prevail even where the lawgiver's words are contrary to his intent. This is even so with legislation where the legislators voted to pass legislation. The words are ratified or passed into law, the intent is not.
United States v Sprague, 282 US 716, 730-732 (1931)
The United States asserts that Article V is clear in statement and in meaning, contains no ambiguity, and calls for no resort to rules of construction. A mere reading demonstrates that this is true.[...]
In spite of the lack of substantial evidence as to the reasons for the changes in statement of Article V from its proposal until it took final form in the finished draft, they seek to import into the language of the Article dealing with amendments, the views of the convention with respect to the proper method of ratification of the instrument as a whole. They say that if the legislatures were considered incompetent to surrender the people's liberties when the ratification of the Constitution itself was involved, a fortiori they are incompetent now to make a further grant. Thus, however clear the phraseology of Article V, they urge we ought to insert into it a limitation on the discretion conferred on the Congress, so that it will read, "as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress, as may be appropriate in view of the purpose of the proposed amendment." This can not be done.
The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear there is no room for construction and no excuse for interpolation or addition. Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304; Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1; Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat. 419; Craig v. Missouri, 4 Pet. 410; Tennessee v. Whitworth, 117 TJ. S. 139; Lake County v. Rollins, 130 U. S. 662; Hodges v. United States, 203 U. S. 1; Edwards v. Cuba R. Co., 268 U. S. 628; The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U. S. 655; Story on the Constitution (5th ed.) § 451; Cooley's Constitutional Limitations (2nd ed.), pp. 61; 70.
If the framers of the instrument had any thought that amendments differing in purpose should be ratified in different ways, nothing would have been simpler than so to phrase Article V as to exclude implication or speculation. The fact that an instrument drawn with such meticulous care and by men who so well understood how to make language fit their thought does not contain any such limiting phrase affecting the exercise of discretion by the Congress in choosing one or the other alternative mode of ratification is persuasive evidence that no qualification was intended.
This Court has repeatedly and consistently declared that the choice of mode rests solely in the discretion of Congress.
Ex Parte Grossman, 267 U.S. 86, 108-09 (1925)
The language of the Constitution cannot be interpreted safely except by reference to the common law and to British institutions as they were when the instrument was framed and adopted. The statesmen and lawyers of the Convention who submitted it to the ratification of the Conventions of the thirteen States, were born and brought up in the atmosphere of the common law, and thought and spoke in its vocabulary. They were familiar with other forms of government, recent and ancient, and indicated in their discussions earnest study and consideration of many of them, but when they came to put their conclusions into the form of fundamental law in a compact draft, they expressed them in terms of the common law, confident that they could be shortly and easily understood.
Conroy v. Aniskoff, 507 US 511, 519 (1993), Scalia, J., concurring
The greatest defect of legislative history is its illegitimacy.We are governed by laws, not by the intentions of legislators. As the Court said in 1844: "The law as it passed is the will of the majority of both houses, and the only mode in which that will is spoken is in the act itself...." Aldridge v. Williams, 3 How. 9, 24 (emphasis added). But not the least of the defects of legislative history is its indeterminacy. If one were to search for an interpretive technique that, on the whole, was more likely to confuse than to clarify, one could hardly find a more promising candidate than legislative history. And the present case nicely proves that point.
Judge Harold Leventhal used to describe the use of legislative history as the equivalent of entering a crowded cocktail party and looking over the heads of the guests for one's friends.
Aldridge v. Williams, 44 U.S. 9, 24 (1845)
In expounding this law, the judgment of the Court cannot in any degree be influenced by the construction placed upon it by individual members of Congress in the debate which took place on its passage nor by the motives or reasons assigned by them for supporting or opposing amendments that were offered. The law as it passed is the will of the majority of both houses, and the only mode in which that will is spoken is in the act itself, and we must gather their intention from the language there used, comparing it, when any ambiguity exists, with the laws upon the same subject and looking, if necessary, to the public history of the times in which it was passed.
United States v Union Pacific Railroad Company, 91 U.S. 72 (1875)
In construing an act of Congress, we are not at liberty to recur to the views of individual members in debate nor to consider the motives which influenced them to vote for or against its passage. The act itself speaks the will of Congress, and this is to be ascertained from the language used. But courts, in construing a statute, may with propriety recur to the history of the times when it was passed, and this is frequently necessary in order to ascertain the reason as well as the meaning of particular provisions in it. Aldridge v. Williams, 3 How. 24; Preston v. Browder, 1 Wheat. 115, 120 [argument of counsel -- omitted].
Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244, 254 (1901)
In expounding this law, the judgment of the Court cannot in any degree be influenced by the construction placed upon it by individual members of Congress in the debate which took place on its passage nor by the motives or reasons assigned by them for supporting or opposing amendments that were offered. The law as it passed is the will of the majority of both houses, and the only mode in which that will is spoken is in the act itself, and we must gather their intention from the language there used, comparing it, when any ambiguity exists, with the laws upon the same subject and looking, if necessary, to the public history of the times in which it was passed.