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Jwalsh, if only the real world were as simple as you seem to comprehend it to be! We could play the dueling political scriptures game for days and resolve nothing.

Second ammendment types seem obsessed with the idea that they might find in some document the 'slam dunk' quote that will somehow alter the fact that the constitution is--for all its quality--an ambiguous document. The number of areas where it is unclear (particularly in areas like war power) nearly match those where it is explicit. The second ammendment is one of those unclear points. Is it an individual right? A state right? How important is the militia clause? What constitutes a militia? None of these questions has a diffinitive answer.

Here is the reality: The meaning of consitution is, was, and always will be contested. Constitutional interpretation is not an act of Hermeneutics it is a political contest. Some time your side will win, sometimes it won't!

It's all in black and white Pitch, you have just failed to read it. I'll ask you again.

Have you read the Federalist Papers?

Of course it will be contested.. probably till the end of time.

However, the tenth is very clear.

There is no power granted to the federal government to regulate firearms. None!

Look at prohibition for crying out loud, they got an amendment to prohibit booze on the federal level, and it's not even enumerated in the BOR. (And I applaud this strict adherence, btw.. they say a problem and they fixed it properly. Not with end runs, but with an amendment.)

Thus, how much more protected is the RKBA?

As Prof. Lawrence Tribe of Harvard University notes, "The people's 'right' to be armed cannot be trumped by the [Second] Amendment's preamble."

Lawrence Tribe came to this conclusion reluctantly and with great sadness. Perhaps you will also.

In Tribes case truth triumphed over ideology, I hope that it does in yours as well.

"Second ammendment"

LOL! Yes, this DU socialist is a teacher. Lucky it isn't english...she'd be fired. (Psst...only one 'm' in amendment...)

--- the constitution is--for all its quality--an ambiguous document. The number of areas where it is unclear (particularly in areas like war power) nearly match those where it is explicit.

To be sure, it was deliberately politically ambiguous about various governmental powers in order assure its ratification. But its basic intent has always been clear. - To guarantee maximum rights to life, liberty, & property for individual citizens.

The second ammendment is one of those unclear points. Is it an individual right? A state right? How important is the militia clause? What constitutes a militia? None of these questions has a diffinitive answer.

Not at all, if looked at with an eye to the basic liberty to possess property, free of unreasonable state restrictons. Weapons of mass destuction can certainly be 'regulated' to the point of prohibition. But infringements upon the ordinary arms of a 'well regulated milita' were never meant to be tolerated, since the security of liberty in a free republic depended on them.

Here is the reality: The meaning of consitution is, was, and always will be contested. Constitutional interpretation is not an act of Hermeneutics it is a political contest. Some time your side will win, sometimes it won't!

Our constitution, our liberties, are not subject to political games. 'Your side' insists that it is, at their peril. - That is reality.

Some time your side will win, sometimes it won't!

Yes, true. However, our side is the one with the guns. If your side 'wins' this 'debate' it will be a pyrrhic victory.

The second ammendment is one of those unclear points. Is it an individual right? A state right? How important is the militia clause? What constitutes a militia? None of these questions has a diffinitive answer.

In the context of how it was originally understood, as shown by the plain words of the Federalist Papers and the Militia Act of 1792, it is necessarily an individual right

As a practical matter, the US does not have a gun problem, it has a criminal problem which is not solvable by trying to ban guns. The drug dealers will always have guns. If all else fails, they'll smuggle them into the country disguised as a routine cocaine shipment. Or give an underpaid Army sergeant a bag full of money to look the other way while they drive off with a truck full of guns, rockets, and grenades. Or just pay an unemployed machinist to MAKE some (and keep in mind that it's easier to make a full-auto rifle than a semi-auto)