All told, the text lays out a stunning power grab. To much of the revolutionary generation, a standing army was the mortal enemy of freedom and self-government. Those ratifying the Constitution had vivid memories of red-clad professional soldiers—some speaking German—swarming ashore to enforce British tax laws, and then to try to crush the Revolution. Now a new government—without so much as saying “by your leave”—could create such a force at pleasure, and send it, and their own militias, to crush any state that did not obey federal ukase. That must have raised hackles from Lexington to Savannah.

That’s the context. To me it suggests that, in adopting what became the Second Amendment, members of Congress were attempting to reassure the states that they could retain their militias and that Congress could not disarm them. Maybe there was a subsidiary right to bear arms; but the militia is the main thing the Constitution revamped, and the militia is what the Amendment talks about.