4. The purpose was to protect the right of the people to form armed militia groups capable of challenging the power of any other contemporary armed force. The original federalist structure of the U.S. Government may have put states in the position of regulating such militia, but the 14th amendment set that power aside.
5. Militia of the sort envisioned by the Constitution are not obsolete from a technical standpoint. Generally, we refer to them as terrorist organizations. The closest modern equivalents are Sunni and Shia insurgent groups in Iraq, and Hezbollah. I think thats really what the founders were thinking. In fact, I recall Nanochick making a very insightful analogy between the founding of this Republic and the present bloodshed in Iraq. Looking at the situation there is the closest thing you can get to understanding the context that the Constitution was written in. I doubt very seriously that you'll see any party to any settlement in Iraq agreeing to lay down their arms. The 2nd amendment is an agreement that the federal government of the US would not disarm the militia. Its the same kind of thing.
6. Almost no one in the US today is comfortable with the idea that armed terrorist organizations can rightfully exist here. The actual purpose of the 2nd amendment is therefore at odds with the interests of the people in this country, and a new amendment ought to be passed, striking it down. If people actually understood what the 2nd amendment meant, a 28th amendment eliminating it would pass readily with broad social consensus.
7. All this nittering about guns for personal defense, as a hobby, etc is tangental to the issue of the 2nd amendment, and people's interest in them should not be used as a justification for continuing to prop up that amendment or twist its interpretation in ridiculous ways. (Furthermore, the concept of guns for personal defense may soon be technically obsolete.) The inherent interest that law abiding people have in being treated like adults and able to legally own guns if they want to exists in all kinds of other contexts that don't happen to be tangent to a constitutional amendment. Examples include the right to drive a car without wearing your seat belt, the right to eat hallucinogenic mushrooms, and the right to buy a beer on Sunday.
The fact that these rights are not tangental to a constitutional amendment does not make them any less or more important than the right to own a handgun, (unless you accept the idea that armed terrorist groups should be allowed in the US and the right to own handguns has to be preserved for the express purpose of protecting the ability of those terrorist groups to operate without constraint). If you're really concerned about handguns strictly for self defense, the basic question is whether government ought to regulate behavior in general that it considers dangerous but which can be engaged in responsibly. That is not a question about the second amendment. The conversation ought to be engaged in a general way.
Often, the reason it isn't, is that the majority of the people in this country don't support the general right to be left alone. The only zones where one is free from onerous regulation in this society are zones that are tangent to constitutional amendments. Those are the only places that people generally respect individual liberty, and often only grudgingly. We need a new social contract that embodies this right, and in order to get it we have to build a broad social consensus for it, and we are far, far from that day.
8. EDIT: I think that there are circumstances where society cannot reasonably trust adults to act responsibly by default. An easy example is nukes. Society cannot trust adults to act responsibly with nukes. The aforementioned social consensus would work better as a general principal than as a strict rule.
9. Second Edit: Those who believe in a limited right to own handguns and rifles for personal defense, or as a hobby, might reasonably consider supporting a constitutional amendment which strikes the second amendment and replaces it with new amendment protecting such a right. I recall that Madison proposed such an amendment originally, which specifically referred to hunting and self defense, although I don't have a reference at hand. It is somewhere in the recent Supreme Court decision.
Not sure if this is the post to reply to, but I've been giving this some thought and I've come up with this:
The problem with the second amendment is that its proponents purport that guns are to be used against tyranny. However, as a group, strong proponents of the 2nd to prevent tyranny are the same people who actively support the destruction of the other amendments, and the total erosion of personal privacy, accountability in government, and the rule of law. This is not a coincidence. There is an attitude that, 'if you have a gun, how bad could it get?' However, one step at a time, it can get very, very bad. But the gun makes people not see that. They give their rights away. Tyranny doesn't happen overnight. It happens one step at a time. People GLADLY give their freedom away in the face of uncertainty. Fromm like a motherfucker.
Thats the problem with 'guns against tyranny' in America. It gives false security. 'Guns for Liberty' makes people disconnect from an active citizenship which would actually effectively oppose the abuse of constitutional rights by government. You don't stop tyranny in a democracy by shooting it out. You stop it by throwing those who would abuse the constitution out of office. Instead you have a political party that gets elected based in part on 2nd amendment fanaticism and proceeds to trample every amendment but the 2nd.
The history of 20th century fascism indicates that guns will not save us from tyranny. We'll go willingly, and we'll use the guns against our fellow citizens to enforce that tyranny.
