I am very conflicted about all this.
The founding fathers seemed to want the general population to be able to be the ultimate check on governmental authority. They themselves had just thrown off the shackles of the British government, and that seems to me to be the ultimate goal of the right to bear arms. It is the foundation of the ability of people to counter and control their government.
I actually touched on this in another thread recently...
There certain things that were put in the document, that were done through the lens of the era.
We know from the other writings of many of the founders, they saw utility in the idea of firearms for self-defense.
However, two big questions with how it related to modern times:
1) Would they have, had they known just how advanced modern firearms would become? (possibly, but I suspect they'd perhaps have been more friendly to some restrictions for certain types of weapons had they had ability to see in the future)
2) It also begs the question, is the main purpose they leaned on (keeping their own government in-check) even relevant (or possible) anymore?
Back when it was written, there wasn't a huge difference between what the average civilian would have vs. what the regular army would have. That's obviously not the case today. In order for it to still be relevant, civilian armaments would've had to keep pace.
I actually think the way the Czech Republic worded theirs is more elegant with regards to a more modern lens and more realistic.
Theirs is simply:
"
the right to defend one's own life or life of another person with arms is guaranteed"
However, they had the luxury of establishing their Charter of Rights in the early 90's after the fall of Communism in Europe, long after it had been more than well understood that a collective of average civilians is never going to be able to match up against a proper modern military.
200 years prior when the US founders were writing theirs, if you would've told them there'd be military flying machines that can traverse the entire landmass between the Atlantic and Pacific in a hour, and drop ordinance that can devastate acres of territory with pinpoint accuracy, and that an average infantryman would be carrying a weapon that could easily pop off 300 rounds in a minute, and special glasses that allowed them to see in the dark, that would make them more effective than 50 of their current-day troops combined, they'd probably assume you were psychotic.
