potowmack institute: Thomas M. Cooley's 1884 edition of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England includes an annotation to the English jurist's comments on the right to bear arms, the annotation stating that "in the United States this right is preserved by express constitutional provisions. But it extends no further than to keep and bear those arms which are suited and proper for the general defense of the community against invasion and oppression." http://www.potowmack.org/lcress.html#note49
Certainly there was no doubt in the mind of Justice Joseph Story {~1830's}, the great constitutional commentator of the period, that the Second Amendment was intended to guarantee "a well-regulated militia."
"The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons who have duly reflected upon the subject." Why? Because "the militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers."
Citing Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, Story noted that "the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers." Story's only concern was that Americans had developed an indifference to the militia that he feared would lead to contempt. If that happened, "all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights" would be undermined. "The importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable," argued the Supreme Court justice, that "how it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see."
The state and federal courts have seldom wavered from Story's interpretation of the Second Amendment. Thomas M. Cooley's 1884 edition of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England includes an annotation to the English jurist's comments on the right to bear arms, the annotation stating that "in the United States this right is preserved by express constitutional provisions. But it extends no further than to keep and bear those arms which are suited and proper for the general defense of the community against invasion and oppression." The decision handed down by the New Jersey Supreme Court a century later is typical of what is by now nearly two centuries of constitutional opinion solidly based in the intellectual climate of the eighteenth century: "The Second Amendment, concerning the right of the people to keep and bear arms, was framed in contemplation not of individual rights but of the maintenance of the states' active, organized militias."
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