dscnt/irony, citing madison: To these [standing army turned tyrannical} would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence..
Thanks dscnt/irony, when did you switch to the militia interpretation point of view?
dscnt: The rational logical conclusion here is that the folks who wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights intended to have the folks who were allowed to vote also be armed with the regular arms with which an infantryman would be equipped.
The flaw in your contention is that only landed gentry & wealthier folk were allowed to vote circa 1792, which only comprised maybe 2% to 5% of total population, maybe 10% of white males. If this were as you say, you'd fall well short of madison's dream of a half million militiamen.
So, with your census figure of ~800,000 free white males that would mean just about 80,000 voters, which is pretty close to the number who voted for GWashington 1792, which was ~100,000 (GW got nearly 100% of the vote btw). The 100,000 is an estimate since popular votes were not recorded until about 1820s.
1787 No federal voting standard—states decide who can vote
U.S. Constitution adopted. Because there is no agreement on a national standard for voting rights, states are given the power to regulate their own voting laws. In most cases, voting remains in the hands of white male landowners.
1789 George Washington elected president. Only 6% of the population can vote.
https://a.s.kqed.net/pdf/education/digitalmedia/us-voting-rights-timeline.pdf
The civic duty to belong to a well regulated citizens militia circa 1792 was not restricted to voters, but to the whole age eligible white male citizenry. Quelle surprise.
dscnt: The rational logical conclusion here is that the folks who wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights intended to have the folks who were allowed to vote also be armed with the regular arms with which an infantryman would be equipped.
'Regular arms' which regular army infantrymen were equipped, were basically single shot muskets, which comprised 80% of the firearms used by america during the rev-war, the rest being largely single shot pistols or single shot slow loading rifled muskets or early rifles. Had the founding fathers envisioned modern firearms they would never have let them be unregulated, no sane person would.
dscnt: Madison was very involved with the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights including the Second Amendment.
For the purposes here you could've just written 'madison who wrote the 2nd amendment'.
Are you still on a learning curve, dscnt?
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