Founding notions, still good

Seems the Founding Fathers had some opinions about the importance of the Second Amendment (from a column by John Silveira):

“In May of 1792, five months after the adoption of the Second Amendment, the Militia Act was passed. That act distinguished between the enrolled militia and the organized militia. Before the passing of that act, there was only the enrolled militia, which was the body of all able-bodied men between the ages of 17 and 44, inclusively, and it is that militia to which the 2nd Amendment refers. It couldn’t refer to the organized militia because it didn’t exist yet. The Second Amendment was to ensure that this body of citizens is armed and that’s why the Founding Fathers thought to place it in the Bill of Rights. Legally, both militias still exist.”
“I don’t believe the Second Amendment gives John or anyone else the right to privately own guns. I think your interpretation is just a well-presented opinion and that the Second Amendment really refers to the powers given to the states.” “That’s okay. Even if you’re right and the Second Amendment refers only to the National Guard, the state police, or some other uniformed military or police organization we’d still have the right to keep and bear arms. We don’t need the Second Amendment.”
“The Founding Fathers did not believe we got our rights from the Bill of Rights. Nor did they believe they came about as a result of being American, Christian, of European decent, or white. They believed everyone had these rights even if they lived in Europe, China, or the moon. They called them Natural Rights. Where these rights were not allowed, they believed they still existed but were denied.”

“Specifically, have you ever read the 9th and 10th Amendments?”
“They were put there to quell the fears of men like Hamilton who were afraid that any rights not mentioned in the Bill of Rights would be usurped by the government.
The 9th says:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
“This means that any rights not mentioned in the Bill of Rights are not to be denied to the people.
“The 10th says:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
“So any powers not specifically given to the Federal government are not powers it can usurp."
“So it’s enough to show the Founding Fathers thought we had a right for it to fall under the protection of the 9th or 10th Amendment. This means that the Founders didn’t even have to specify we have the right to free speech, religion, jury trials, or anything else. To understand what they felt our rights were, all you had to do was show what they said our rights are. Any rights in the first eight Amendments are just redundant with what the Founding Fathers considered Natural Rights."

Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion...in private self-defense. That was said by John Adams in A Defense Of The Constitution.
The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. That was said by Samuel Adams, John Adams’ second or third cousin, during Massachusetts’ U.S. Constitution ratification convention in 1788.
Here are a few by Jefferson:
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in Government.
And here’s another by him:
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
He wrote this as part of the proposed Virginia Constitution, in 1776.
And here’s one more. It’s Jefferson quoting Cesare Beccaria—a Milanese criminologist whom he admired who was also his contemporary—in On Crimes and Punishment:
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.


In response to a proposal for gun registration, George Washington said:
Absolutely not. If the people are armed and the federalists do not know where the arms are, there can never be an oppressive government.