The Bourgeois Right to Bear Arms

[Potscreamr at cs.com]

On 27 June 1788, the anti-Federalists, fearing creation of a standing army 
that could eventually endanger democracy and civil liberties, as had 
previously occured in Britain and Rome, proposed the following amendment to 
the Constitution: 

That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated 
militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, 
natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of 
peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as 
the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that, in 
all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed 
by, the civil power.(*)
That text, edited down to the Second Amendment, explains its original 
purpose—to establish a "well-regulated" democratic army of citizen-soldiers 
instead of a professional army; not to encourage the anarchic proliferation 
of weapons in civil society. 
Second Amendment, as finally worded: 

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, 
the right of the people to bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Tupaat S.Kreemer