Federal Judge: Assault Weapons Not Protected by 2nd Amendment

[BjornF16]

Yes, really. The Militia Act of 1792 (not 1903) describes the militia as originally conceived by the Founders.

Not quite.

At the time of the Constitutional Convention debates, service in militia for the various states was able bodied men aged 16-60 (varied slightly between states), not the age listed in Militia Acts of 1792.

To wit, from Anti-Federalist #29:

First, the personal liberty of every man, probably from sixteen to sixty years of age, may be destroyed by the power Congress have in organizing and governing of the militia. As militia they may be subjected to fines to any amount, levied in a military manner; they may be subjected to corporal punishments of the most disgraceful and humiliating kind; and to death itself, by the sentence of a court martial. To this our young men will be more immediately subjected, as a select militia, composed of them, will best answer the purposes of government.

But my point in referencing the 1903 Militia Act was to point out that the National Guard had not entirely replaced the militia as you asserted. The act allowed for non-NG "unorganized militia"...thus, the militia is alive and well.

In keeping with the OP, I leave the following (again courtesy of Scalia in DC v Heller):

All other post-Civil War 19th-century sources we have found concurred with Cooley. One example from each decade will convey the general flavor:

“[The purpose of the Second Amendment is] to secure a well-armed militia. . . . But a militia would be useless unless the citizens were enabled to exercise themselves in the use of warlike weapons. To preserve this privilege, and to secure to the people the ability to oppose themselves in military force against the usurpations of government, as well as against enemies from without, that government is forbidden by any law or proceeding to invade or destroy the right to keep and bear arms. . . . The clause is analogous to the one securing the freedom of speech and of the press. Freedom, not license, is secured; the fair use, not the libellous abuse, is protected.” J. Pomeroy, An Introduction to the Constitutional Law of the United States 152– 153 (1868) (hereinafter Pomeroy).

There it is again...purpose of 2A to oppose tyranny as well as mutual defense from external threats; and government is forbidden by and law to destroy the right to keep and bear arms...