The second amendment was so the government could draft them and their gun if they had one. If they didn't want to fight for their state or country, they would take their gun and give to someone who would. The second is about collective responsibility, not individual rights, that's just a by product. They were short on cash and guns back then, so it was a way get them to buy the guns the state could use.
Socialism!
That’s a fanciful bit but yer off on a few.
In the hunting-dependent colonies, firearms were as important as nails, axes, shovels, hammers. At the time, hunting was a major source of food, so many households had at least one. However, a militia is not a draft, and nothing supports the contention that drafting citizens with guns was the plan. Nor does your economic argument.
You are correct, though, about the purpose of the 2nd: it is about collective responsibility, not individual freedoms. The constitution is quite specific that the USA is to have no standing army, no professional military. The founders were committed to a citizen militia instead. A militia, according to the 2nd, must be well-regulated - that is, it must be trained in the use of arms in combat, small-and medium-unit movement and tactics, chain of commands, rules of engagement and so forth. It must be capable of taking the field and providing an adequate defense against whatever danger they face, and it must be capable of working effectively with other militias in the heat of battle. The closest the US has to such a force is the National Guard.
The militias we keep hearing from and about don’t fit the necessary description. They are ad-hoc collections of individuals who imagine themselves in a movie about freedom fighters, who may or may not have any actual military training, and are not part of any co-ordinated effort to provide defensive assistance except on their own whim. These militia actors don’t even know that they’ve been rendered moot by the National Defense Authorisation Act. The NDAA.
The news is full of the NDAA right now, as Congress moves overrule a Trump veto against it...but the NDAA is *WHY* we have a standing army, a permanent military, and not state militias. In Article 8 of the constitution, under powers of government, it says: “
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years
”.
Plain enough, but that has come to mean that every two years, another NDAA come up to be voted on...and the survival of the mighty American war machine hangs in the balance. Without re-authorization, we disarm. We stand down. We demobilize.
In the face of that, I really have to wonder just how necessary that ‘well-regulated’ militia actually *IS* to the security of a free state these days....