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Couldn't say it better than my rep, Sean Casten:
For the originalists/textualists, from Sean Casten's twitter feed:
The word "militia" shows up 6 times in the Constitution. 4 times in the base text, once in the 2nd amendment and once in the 5th. A reasonable inquiry of our founders intent should assume that they used that word with the same meaning throughout. Let's review them.
Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have the power to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions"
Same section, next paragraph: "[and] to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress"
Section 2, first sentence: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States"
Those are the entirety of the Militia references in the text. So... it isn't much of a leap to assume that when they referred to a "well regulated militia" in 2A, they meant a body called forth, organized and armed by the Congress subject to a narrow set of circumstances, commanded by the President with officers appointed, trained and disciplined by the states. Which is to say that "well-regulated" had a complete meaning, consistent with the entirety of the Constitution, in plain view. Only the hackiest, most partisan jurists would need to rely on "intellectual jiggery pokery" to conclude that the first 13 words in 2A don't matter. And yet that is exactly what the Scalia court (yes, Scalia was the guy who coined the IJ-P term) did in Heller when they said that there is a private right to gun ownership that supercedes the collective right to safety. That court is responsible for untold American deaths.
For the originalists/textualists, from Sean Casten's twitter feed:
The word "militia" shows up 6 times in the Constitution. 4 times in the base text, once in the 2nd amendment and once in the 5th. A reasonable inquiry of our founders intent should assume that they used that word with the same meaning throughout. Let's review them.
Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have the power to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions"
Same section, next paragraph: "[and] to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress"
Section 2, first sentence: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States"
Those are the entirety of the Militia references in the text. So... it isn't much of a leap to assume that when they referred to a "well regulated militia" in 2A, they meant a body called forth, organized and armed by the Congress subject to a narrow set of circumstances, commanded by the President with officers appointed, trained and disciplined by the states. Which is to say that "well-regulated" had a complete meaning, consistent with the entirety of the Constitution, in plain view. Only the hackiest, most partisan jurists would need to rely on "intellectual jiggery pokery" to conclude that the first 13 words in 2A don't matter. And yet that is exactly what the Scalia court (yes, Scalia was the guy who coined the IJ-P term) did in Heller when they said that there is a private right to gun ownership that supercedes the collective right to safety. That court is responsible for untold American deaths.
