I appreciate the approach, RS[, and it is important to look to the sources, however, I feel compelled to note that you have only provided sources from one side of the equation. That is one of the inherent problems with approaching any legislative interpretation, because thoughts of individuals may have informed their particular decision to support the language, but it does not demonstrate the thought of the whole, as each legislator formed their own opinions. It is also important to note changes in wording of legislation as it is proposed, debated, changed, and finalized. In this case, again, the legislative history is fairly sparse, but not nonexistent.

The debate over the meaning of the Amendment, while longstanding, is of relatively recent origin. One of the problems I have always had in researching and drawing a conclusion with regard to the answer, unfortunately, apparently including the current decision, is that explanations are almost always determined by the existing opinion of the author. I've found neither determination convincing, as anti-gun control advocates like the NRA completely elide the first clause "a well-regulated militia being necessary," while control advocates over-emphasize it to draw an equally flawed conclusion. My position has evolved over time.

An intriguing new look at the question - and a well-researched and different conclusion - is drawn by Saul Cornell in his new book A Well-Regulated Militia
The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America . I am picking up a copy this afternoon, so I can report on it more fully later, but the book description is as follows:
Quote
Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong.
Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right--an obligation citizens owed to the state to arm themselves so that they could participate in a well regulated militia. He shows how the modern "collective right" view of the Second Amendment, the one federal courts have accepted for over a hundred years, owes more to the Anti-Federalists than the Founders. Likewise, the modern "individual right" view emerged only in the nineteenth century. The modern debate, Cornell reveals, has its roots in the nineteenth century, during America's first and now largely forgotten gun violence crisis, when the earliest gun control laws were passed and the first cases on the right to bear arms came before the courts. Equally important, he describes how the gun control battle took on a new urgency during Reconstruction, when Republicans and Democrats clashed over the meaning of the right to bear arms and its connection to the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Democrats defeated the Republicans, it elevated the "collective rights" theory to preeminence and set the terms for constitutional debate over this issue for the next century.
Oxford University Press The reason I am seeking the book out is that it speaks to the very internal debate I have long had over the issue, and seems to answer the very question I have always had - although I believe it is an "individual right," I have also always believed that it is intimately tied to the States' interests in maintaining a militia, since States have always had the right to regulate gun ownership free of 2nd Amendment constraints.

A well reasoned argument is like a diamond: impervious to corruption and crystal clear - and infinitely rarer.

Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game -- an economy that won't respond, a democracy that won't listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards. - Robert Reich