To understand the absurdity of the arguement just take a few quotes outside the Constitution by any of the founding fathers. I will present a few as examples.

“The great object is that every man be armed . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun.” (Patrick Henry

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.” (Richard Henry Lee

“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”

– Alexander Hamilton

Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defence be the *real* object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?

– Patrick Henry, speech of June 9 1788

To disarm the people… was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

– George Mason

Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.

– “M.T. Cicero”, in a newspaper letter of 1788 touching the “militia” referred to in the Second Amendment to the Constitution

That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms…

– Samuel Adams, in “Phila. Independent Gazetteer”, August 20, 1789

The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the *government*, not to *society*; and as long as they have nothing to revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage.

– Joel Barlow, “Advice to the Privileged Orders”, 1792-93

I can go on forever frankly, but let there be no doubt, when the framers said, the right of the people, they meant individual citizens.