The Second Amendment--Prying The Gun From Your Cold Dead Hand

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution provides that:  A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Sitting around with the geezers this morning, my pal Ken was relating the story of his time in the great college town that he and I attended as undergraduates.  There is a great old time dive there where one afternoon he was warming a bar stool while engaging in the reverse alchemy of turning wine into water, awaiting artistic inspiration.  Suddenly there was a "loud pop."  Let's let Ken tell the res of the tale:  "...so we all thought it was a tail pipe or something outside.  We just kept drinking and BS-ing, one of the guys at the bar got up and went to the men's room.  When he came out, he asked the bartender to call an ambulance, he had shot himself in the ass with a gun that he had in his pocket." The major controversy over the "right to bear arms" has been whether or not the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to have guns or a collective right of "militias" to have guns.  In my career as a Bad Lawyer my second amendment experience is limited to friends who are more interested in the subject than I am.  As far as I'm concerned it makes a lot more sense to view the Gun right as a collective privileged arising in the same context as the third amendment rights--quick without looking what is your third amendment right?   These are revolutionary-era protections for citizens vis-a-vis the King, and his armies.  The King can't march into your village and take your homes, and your militia's (police officers') guns.   But far be it for me to say the Government can take away your right to shoot yourself in the ass in a public place.