Your entire argument is that this one right in the bill of rights -- exclusive to only this one -- gives the state a right and not an individual a right, and yo

Your entire argument is that this one right in the bill of rights -- exclusive to only this one -- gives the state a right and not an individual a right, and you're predicating this argument on the fact that militias existed and a misunderstanding of the word "regulated". The amendment's English is crystal clear. The first clause assumes that the people have an individual right to keep and bear arms, and that right is not to be infringed. The rest of what you have written is pure sophistry. Your true agenda has finally come through with your argument that guns cause crime. Firearms have been available in the US -- almost utterly without restriction -- you could buy them by mail order -- up to 1968. We even had semi automatic firearms in the revolutionary war. We didn't have mass shootings and "waves of suicide" (also sophistry) until very recently. If guns caused crime, the west should have been a blood soaked orgy of it -- and yet it wasn't, except by Hollywood's reckoning. Japan bans guns almost completely, someone murdered a bunch of people with a sword (also banned) just recently, and in another incident someone burned down a venue and murdered a bunch of people that way. No guns required. Also, without the 3/5 compromise, the slave states would have counted their slaves completely, and that would have given them significant additional numbers in Congress, which would have enabled them to keep the slave trade legal. I don't give a flying rat's ass what Wikipedia has to say about it. I also love your final words, where your political agenda becomes clear. Nothing you wrote cares about the actual law, your entire argument is trying to cram a political argument into a quasi-historical misunderstanding to attempt to abrogate the Constitution's words. Scalia was the exact antithesis of an activist judge, anyone who has read anything he wrote with an unprejudiced eye knows this. His general position on everything he ever ruled on was that the Constitution meant exactly what it said. He was widely reviled by the left for his refusal to go beyond the words of the Constitution. "If you somehow adopt a philosophy that the Constitution itself is not static, but rather, it morphs from age to age to say whatever it ought to say — which is probably whatever the people would want it to say — you've eliminated the whole purpose of a constitution. And that's essentially what the 'living constitution' leaves you with" Your argument does not respect the rule of law, does not respect the Constitution, and does not respect the country you live in as you want to change it illegally with activist judges. That's unfortunate. Heller didn't change anything for 80% of the US where the Constitution was already respected as the rule of law. It simply forced those who did not to accept a badly watered down reading of the document (as Justice Kennedy's vote was required, and that was as far as he was willing to go). It really didn't even change anything in DC in practice, frankly -- DC's gun ban has always been perfectly ineffectual, the only people who follow it are Virginians like me who carefully follow the law and don't commit crimes. The criminals in DC do whatever they want, pre and post Heller. https://thefederalist.com/2018/11/29/second-amendment-always-individual-right/ https://thefederalist.com/2018/11/29/second-amendment-always... https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90011526 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=900115...