Originally posted by Miss You
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Thankfully they did and here is how St. George Tucker actually interpreted the 2nd Amend in 1803:
"This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty .... The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorize the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty."
The quote you employ from St. George Tucker is where he is interpreting Article I, Sec 8, Paragraphs 15-16... the militia power. He merely states that "uneasiness upon the subject" was removed by passage of the 2nd Amend, he does not assert that is what the 2nd Amend means.
http://www.constitution.org/tb/t1d10000.htm
The conclusion is inescapable. St. George Tucker believed that the 2nd Amend protected an individual right of self defense and that, in addition, by protecting the individual right of arms, an unassailable armory of arms is safeguarded for potential use by the militia in the event the feds ever failed to properly arm the militia, either by maicious design, or by benign neglect.
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