guns r tools, men are evil...
Well put, look to other countries that have banned or severly controlled guns, people still get hands on guns, it is a difficult problem. Take em away and now the GOV is the only one with a military!!! But the right to bare arms really is to arm a Militia in case our GOV start straying too far from the IDEAL Government, we the people can join a militia a remind the Gov about our founding father idea of Gov - Stay out of the people's way and help defend them against forien dictators and give them opportunities to suceed and they will! I think we currently have power drunk idiots that forgot that the founding fathers were NOT about world domination, just about being able to live without the Gov telling them how to do it.
As long as there are evil men there will always be deadly weapons they will use. Eliminating firearms completely is a fairy tale. As long as the bad guys have them (and they will), the good guys must have the means to defend themselves, and if necessary, fight back.
If the 2nd Amendment is a collective right as you seem to put forth (you can only have a gun if you are member of a militia), it is the ONLY one in the Bill of Rights. The other nine protect individual rights against the federal government, but not the 2nd? Could it be that the 2nd Amendment, like the 10th Amendment, does differ from the rest in that it is BOTH a collective and an individual right?
Thanks to Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, the word 'Militia' became a dirty word after the Oklahoma City bombing. I ain't joining no milita as long as Michael Moore is making films.
It is the 2nd Amendment which backs up the other nine articles, as well as the rest of the Constitution. We need only look back as far as Germany under the Nazi Party. Gun control was one of their most important early successes. It allowed them the freedom to act without fear of a popular uprising. And act they did.