Phil Lee:
The founders wrote the Constitution and wrote articles about the meaning and effect of segments of the Constitution.
I don't care, unless you can either establish, 1) that the articles are admissible under the rules of legal interpretation existent at the time the Constitution was made, or, 2) that the lawmakers, as they made the Constitution, assumed that the time honored common law method of legal interpretation was to be suddenly cast aside, in favor of the personal opinions expressed in articles written after the instrument was adopted.
If the supreme law of the land was going to be whatever was contained in articles written after the Constitution was adopted, there would have been no point in making a Constitution?
I note for the record that, there was a rule of construction, in 1789, that "terms of art, or technical terms, must be taken according to the acceptation of the learned in each art, trade, and science." There might maybe somewhere possibly perhaps exist an article written before the adoption of the Second Amendment by a well respected legal authority that might could maybe possibly provide the meaning of a particular term of art or technical term found in the Amendment.
I don't know of any. But if we found one, it might be admissible.
There was also a rule that "words are always to be understood as having a regard" "as to the
subject matter" "for it] is always supposed to be in the eye of the legislator, and all his expressions directed to that end."
In other words, we should have regard for the way the words found in the Second Amendment were used in previous laws and other pre-enactment writings, covering the same "subject matter" as that covered by the Amendment.
For example: We should assume that the lawmakers had their eye upon the way the term "well regulated" had been used in previous laws, other writings or recorded statements made upon the subject of "militia."
For example: If Patrick Henry and James Madison had articulated a precise meaning for the term "well regulated militia" during during their many exchanges at the Virginia Ratification Convention; and then John Randolph, Edmund Randolph, John Marshall, James Monroe and John Blair had all indicated that their understanding of the term was exactly the same, there might be a good case for putting that signification upon the term.
In summary, any articles written or statements made after the Second Amendment was adopted are inadmissible. Articles and statements made before the Amendment was adopted, must be admissible under one the rules of interpretation existent at the time the Amendment was made.
I totally reject the present conventional wisdom that an amateurish, or even the most professional, analysis of history can provide us with the will of the lawmakers at the time they made the Second Amendment.
We should use the rules of legal interpretation to ascertain the meaning of the Second Amendment, because that was the way, the only way, constitutions were interpreted at the time the U. S. Constitution was made.