http://www.2ndlawlib.org/journals/vanalful.html

ESSAY

THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND THE PERSONAL RIGHT TO ARMS

William Van Alstyne[+]

Introduction

Perhaps no provision in the Constitution causes one to stumble quite
so much on a first reading, or second, or third reading, as the short
provision in the Second

Amendment of the Bill of Rights. No doubt this stumbling occurs because,
despite the brevity of this amendment, as one reads, there is an apparent
non sequitur–or disconnection of a sort–in midsentence. The amendment
opens with a recitation about a need for “[a] well regulated Militia.”[1]
But having stipulated to the need for “[a] well regulated Militia,” the
amendment then declares that the right secured by the amendment–the
described right that is to be free of “infringement”–is not (or not just)
the right of a state, or of the United States, to provide a well regulated
militia. Rather, it is “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.”

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.[2](p.1237)