I'm not claiming to be a scholar of court history, but the ACLU usually does fairly well at interpreting them, based on their legal record.
Well, except for those instances when the ACLU is duplicitously misrepresenting the Court to further a leftist political agenda.
Either the ACLU is correct or they are lying . . . Either
Heller was the first time that the Court said the 2nd Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms without regard to one's state militia attachment, or I'm correct, that the Court recognized the right to bear arms being possessed by two ex-slaves, who were disarmed, kidnapped and lynched by the KKK in 1873 Louisiana, a state that had
no state militia.
There's no interpretation to be done there; the facts be the facts. In referencing the indictment of the KKK members, the Court said:
"The right there specified is that of "bearing arms for a lawful purpose." This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed, but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government, leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow citizens of the rights it recognizes, to [the local police]."
The Court rejected federal court jurisdiction because the KKK members who violated the two Black citizens' right to arms (among many others) were
private citizens, not state government agents . . . so the 14th Amendment (and thus the 2nd) didn't apply.
The Court affirms the principle that the 2nd Amendment is not the source of the right to arms thus the right is not in any manner dependent on the Constitution to exist. That principle, all by itself negates and extinguishes any notion that the right is conditioned, qualified or contingent upon a citizen being a member of the militia.
That principle was further explained and re-
re-
re-affirmed by the
Heller Court 132 years later:
"t has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment , like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876) , “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed … .”"
Please don't swallow the ACLU's lie.