I've oft argued with some of my Oath Keepers friends that the 2nd really only protects a 'stand of arms' as defined by Noah Webster's 1828 First Edition American dictionary:

>"A stand of arms consists of a musket, bayonet, cartridge-box and belt, with a sword. But for common soldiers a sword is not necessary."

Updated for modern times, this would include weapons an individual infantryman/militiaman/citizen soldier would be expected to have on his person when expectation of confrontation is high. Grenades technically may not be included, as explosives as a whole were considered the exclusive domain of artillery back then, not sire arms.

The intentions of the folks including the 2nd Amendment into the first 10 was to guarantee that, should need arise, a body of folks carrying similar arms & armor could be assembled in a short time by area leaders for the purposes of common defense without maintaining a standing army of any sort, as a standing army was oft considered to be anathematic to liberty in the long run.

This does not exclude a heightened requirement/expectation that those folks carrying similarly & militarily useful arms be trained in the use, safe storage, and proper care of said gear, & it also does not disallow rules requiring those citizen soldiers have the proper modern tactical training necessary for effective battlefield acumen. A requested period of military conscription (forced or otherwise) is not contraindicated by the Bill of Rights for those, at least insofar as it is considered necessary to train folks who may be called upon to defend the homeland.

Some argue that this duty is performed nowadays by the National Guard, but that is not what the founders intended: the Guard is an auxiliary wing of the standing army the founders worked so hard to avoid, and as such falls into another category entirely. A basic training/advanced individual training course and monthly/yearly updates is fine, but calling upon citizen soldiers to work for Halliburton securing oilfields for the Bushes in Iraq is not.

My prediction for the future of military-style firearms in civilian hands? I have heard rumors of reclassification of certain types of semiautomatic rifles as Title II firearms (in the AOW - "Any Other Weapon" - category with its standard $5 transfer tax), controlled in the same way machineguns, short-barreled shotguns, sound suppressors, and a host of other oddities are now controlled (and quite successfully I might add - legal Title II firearms are near-never used in crimes against another person) . Doing this would negate the necessity of placing limitations upon how many firearms a private collector can own, and would also utilize an already-existing system of background checks in conjunction with local checks and balances to determine whether or not an individual is allowed to collect firearms in this manner.

I don't personally agree with doing this (I'm a through-to-the-core capital 'L' Libertarian - there's no changing my mind on the dangers of allowing leaders the slack in determining who is friend or foe amongst the citizenry, regardless of most consequences), but it seems it would assuage the media-fueled fear running rampant in society today.

If such a thing is implemented, ideally the only way to stay true to the founder's intentions would be to have the option of conscription as a loophole in firearms tracking/registration - that one 'stand of arms' for the trained individual citizen-soldier would be beyond the reach of the powers-that-be, untrackable and off-limits. A period of basic training not predicated on international deployment (separate from the Guard) would (should) weed out those whackjobs who commit such heinous offenses as we saw at Shady Hook and the Aurora theater - I doubt those unstable pieces of human garbage could play well with others long enough to pass their basic training course, and even if they could, the drill instructors in charge of such things would notice just how 'off' those weirdos are relatively quickly & could order additional psychological evaluations to place on their permanent records, negating their ability to legally purchase those types of firearms in civilian life whilst booting them from the Swiss-style militia program.

In other news, I had no idea I'd made an account here sometime in the past. Might as well check things out for a bit.

EDITS: If I'm to make huge comments as once was my pastime at Reddit before the dawn of time, I'll apparently have to relearn basic sentence structure.