Sorry the Militia's were not formed to defend against our own government. They were the rapid deployment force of their day to be used while a regular army could be raised and trained. Not only do we have most powerful military in the world, and the National Guard but we also have a well militarized police force in place to "Defend" our freedom.
And as has been point out already the Court has said it is not an unlimited right.
Who made up the militia and who were 'the people' the amendment referred to?
Wow.
Who gives our government the power to have a military?
But, again. The Court did hold that the right is an individual right (regardless of the irrelevant dicta about limitations).
Some quotes from some of the founders and other political philosophers:
"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
George Mason
Co-author of the Second Amendment during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves …"
Richard Henry Lee
writing in
Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic, Letter XVIII, May, 1788.
"Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
George Washington
"The great object is that every man be armed." and "Everyone who is able may have a gun."
Patrick Henry
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"
Patrick Henry
"Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not."
Thomas Jefferson
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that … it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; … "
Thomas Jefferson
"The best we can help for concerning the people at large is that they be
properly armed."
Alexander Hamilton
"The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."
Edmund Burke
"The ruling class doesn't care about public safety. Having made it very difficult for States and localities to police themselves, having left ordinary citizens with no choice but to protect themselves as best they can, they now try to take our guns away. In fact they blame us and our guns for crime. This is so wrong that it cannot be an honest mistake."
Malcolm Wallop
“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
John Basil Barnhill.
“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance.”
Woodrow Wilson. (even this commie understood)
"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms."
Thomas Jefferson
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”
Justice Louis Brandeis.
“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.”
Ronald Reagan.
“Those who nourish the hope that it will be possible to keep central government free of the corrupting tendencies of power and to staff it with a freedom-loving elite, overestimate the virtues of both the electorate and the elected, and underestimate the normative power of structural processes even over well-intended functionaries.”
Robert Nef.
“Certainly one of the
chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.”
Hubert H. Humphrey.
And, in case there is any doubt about the true objectives of the commie left:
"Our main agenda is to have all guns banned. We must use whatever means possible. It doesn't matter if you have to distort the facts or even lie. Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed."
Sara Brady
Chairman, Handgun Control Inc, to Senator Howard Metzenbaum
The National Educator, January 1994, Page 3.
