Basic English grammar disagrees. The subject of the 2nd Amendment has always been the People. Basic English grammar is actually ambiguous. Does "the People" m

Basic English grammar disagrees. The subject of the 2nd Amendment has always been the People. Basic English grammar is actually ambiguous. Does "the People" mean "the People as a group" or "each of the People"? In other words is it a communal right or an individual one? Nobody takes the time to write down or make a big fuss about a settled question... And the point is that the understanding of what a milita was, how it worked, and the fact that it was a system that had been in place for close to a thousand years. (Having been created by Alfred the Great for defense against the Vikings.) There is no direct equivalent in the American declarations to the selective Protestant “subjects” invoked in the Bill of Rights of 1689... I would hope not, given that it's always been a settled question that your religion in this country isn't something the government is allowed to infringe upon, and furthermore, arguments of "legislative Supremacy" disappear when you actually read the bill of rights in order, as the First Amendment reads, No, it hasn't "always been settled". In fact 1689 was long before the USA existed, and while British colonies then allowed freedom of religion, all but Pennsylvania had official state churches with government support. And within living memory, many of the colonies had had restrictions on what religions were allowed. It was therefore by no means automatic that laws passed in the New World at that point would not follow the British precedent. Furthermore the British had good reason to have that religious test. At the time Catholic doctrine supported the murder of excommunicated monarchs, they kept track of who they believed the rightful monarch of England was (never the one that the English believed to be their monarch), and the English believed in the truth of a variety of plots both real (Guy Fawkes) and imagined (the starting of the Fire of London) by Catholics bent on overthrowing the English monarchy. Therefore allowing weapons for Catholics rather reasonably could lead to the destabilization of the government.