Point Click, Fire: An Undercover Investigation of Illegal Online Gun Sales

[SteveW]

156. No, the operative clause in the Second is...

"...The people's right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

The Bill of Rights is an enumeration of recognized rights, and the Second is no exception.

The "militia clause" states only the federal government's interest in the Second as necessary to fulfill it's militia duties, as specified in the Articles. Please note that the "militia clause" was only popularized in the 1960s in an attempt to justify restrictions of firearms in accordance with militia functions. One such popularizer, Laurence Tribe, has since recanted his position (1999) and now acknowledges that there is an individual right to keep and bear arms. The militia clause has never garnered much support among those who have studied the Second Amendment's history, court rulings, etc. For some reason, some elements of MSM like it. Most do not:

"What about the seemingly odd two-clause construction, which some commentators have called "unusual," "special," and "nearly unique"? 2 It turns out that there's nothing odd about it at all. During the Framing Era, dozens of individual rights provisions in state constitutions were structured the same way, providing a justification clause explaining the right, and then an operative clause securing the right. The 1842 Rhode Island Constitution's Free Press Clause, for instance, reads

'The liberty of the press being essential to the security of freedom in a state, any person may publish his sentiments of any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty . . . .' 3

"Just as with the Second Amendment, the second clause secures a right, while the first justifies it to the public."

http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/testimon.htm
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Note also that "press," even with its "public justification," does not limit citizens to the use of a wooden, spiral screw machine, or you wouldn't be using a computer under the jaundiced eyes of the grammar monster!