"Why do you need an AR15?"

[montana]

It is revealing that in the thousands of pages of proceedings that were published in the course of the debates that took place in the state and federal legislatures before the drafting of the bill of rights and throughout the ratification period, little mention is made of the individual right to keep and bear arms. This indicates, I think it is fair to say, that whatever their disagreements about the inclusion of a bill of rights in the Constitution, the Federalists and Anti-federalists were unanimous in their support of an individual right to keep and bear arms. They were also unanimous in assuming that "the right of the people to keep…arms" included the individual right to keep ordinary personal arms for armed self- and community-defense, especially against burglars, robbers, and rapists.

This lack of understanding of the nature of the controversy between the Federalists and the Anti-federalists is one of the two principal reasons, I believe, why the proponents of gun control have reached the erroneous conclusion that the Second Amendment guarantees only a "collective right" or "states' right" to keep and bear arms.

Whatever the merits of the Anti-federalists' cause, we know now that the Federalists persevered in the controversy and the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution. When the first U.S. Congress convened on March 4, 1789, 103 proposed amendments had been submitted by the states to be considered for inclusion in a bill of rights. Congress reduced that number to twelve, and these were sent back to the states for ratification. Two amendments failed to be ratified, and the remaining ten, now called the Bill of Rights, were ratified on December 15, 1791.