Is Gun Ownership a Right?

[stanc]

I do often wonder why the FF's decided that only one single amendment needed an explanatory preface....

I'm going to take another shot at this.

If what BjornF16 said in post #109 is true, putting the militia clause at the beginning of the sentence was not meant to be explanatory, but simply to make the amendment "read better."

Note that Madison's original version did not have an explanatory preface:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.

Instead of rearranging the order of the two clauses, what they really should've done was delete the militia clause from the sentence (as they did with the "conscientious objector" clause).