“The Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller … vindicates the arguments of those of us who always have understood that the whole purpose of the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution … was to protect individual freedoms. This does not preclude some reasonable limitations, as also is true of First Amendment freedoms regarding religion, speech, press and peaceable assembly. The significance is the acknowledgment of the principle that the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms … is an individual right; and that ‘a well regulated militia’ was understood by the framers as meaning all able-bodied, law-abiding citizens, having their own arms, capable of being ‘properly formed’ into local units.” (07/11/08)