The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America clearly states:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

If you take out both modifying clauses and reduce the Second Amendment to its essence, It reads: “A well regulated Militia, …, shall not be infringed.”

Both phrases: “being necessary to the security of a free State” and “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms”, are modifiers of the term Militia and are not the primary intent of the Second Amendment. Any grammarian can see that, you don’t have to be a Constitutional Scholar.

If one reads the legislative history of the Second Amendment (to non lawyers, legislative history is the collection of all drafts, written statements, debates, etc.,, taken as a whole) it becomes abundantly clear that the intent of the framers of our Constitution was that the Second Amendment was meant to facilitate the maintenance of “a well regulated Militia.”

If I may paraphrase the Second Amendment, it says that your right to bear arms is sacrosanct as long as you are part of a “well regulated Militia.” So if you want to bear arms freely, I believe (with some knowledge of Constitutional law) that you should join a well “regulated” Militia or the National Guard.

I fail to understand why noted legal scholars of Originalism, such as Antonin Scalia, cannot see this.

Phil