The 2nd Amendment Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means | Think Again

This is pretty good, but I would guess that most people who would leave comments wouldn't have watched this: 

 The next video is a fairly decent explanation of Second Amendment case law, but it leaves out the issue of standing armies. Just remember the real issue was what form would the common defence take? A professional military or something like what Switzerland had. That is a small professional force for administration and training with the bulk of the forces being part timers.

That gets lost in the debate even though there is far more evidence that is what the issue was.

Toss in that the militia was pretty much a dead letter from the start.  The George Mason’s quote as recorded in the transcripts of the Virginia Ratifying Convention is a good confirmation of that:

“I ask, Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers. But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor; but they may be confined to the lower and middle classes of the people, granting exclusion to the higher classes of the people.”

Unfortunately, the exclusion was common in Mason's time, as my ancestor, a poor, Pennsylvania farm kid would attest. Dislike for the Militia was pretty much what killed it off, as this passage from Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 3:§§ 1890 (1833) points out:

And yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid of all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights.

The Second Amendment died of desuetude long ago. Attempts to revive it only create an out of control monster.