Subject: Re: She Had No Face
Taking this in reverse order:
This is all further complicated by the Reconstruction Amendments which -roughly- said that the Constitution also applies to the states, which means that states are affected by 2A now. They weren't previously. I suspect that was an unintended consequence in what otherwise was a worthy set of amendments.

The Constitution applies to all the states at all times, always has. Did we have a nonuniform first amendment (excepting slaves) prior to 1865, for example?\

I think the key ones (forget which numbers now) refer to states raising their own militias, and that the federal should not be able to interfere with that. Hence, the first thirteen words of the 2A. Heller (through Scalia) basically said "they didn't really mean that", and we now have the mess we have. And it won't be fixed in my lifetime, likely.

2A has always been about the right to bear arms. The militia part describes the right of the people to be armed:

https://founders.archives.gov/...

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprizes of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain that with this aid alone, they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will, and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned, in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition, that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures, which must precede and produce it.

Madison is CLEARLY SAYING that one of the central differences between Americans and the subjects of Europe is the ability of US citizens to potentially put a stop to unjust rule.