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The Right of the People to Keep and
Bear Arms: The Common Law
Tradition Full story here. A must read.

Weatherup insists that the English right conveyed “no recognition of any personal right to bear arms on the part of subjects generally” but merely granted members of the militia the right to “keep and bear arms in accordance with their militia duties.” [124] Such an interpretation ignores the clear language of the English right and disregards the accompanying historic record. The militia was certainly of grave concern to members of the Convention Parliament, but this was not because members of the militia had been disarmed. Quite the contrary. The militia was a problem because the Militia Act of 1662 had permitted its officers wide latitude to disarm law-abiding citizens. The correction of this abuse and many others that preoccupied the members required new legislation

IE the 2nd amd. does not give the militia the right to have arms but it says that because we have a militia the people have a right to protect themselves from it.

The Whig members of the Convention had pressed hard for a collective as well as an individual right [128] and the first version of the arms article adhered to their view that the public should be armed to protect their rights:

It is necessary for the publick Safety, that the Subjects which are Protestants, should provide and keep Arms for their common Defence. And that the Arms which have been seized, and taken from them, be restored. [129]
The second version of this article retreated somewhat from this stance. It stated:

That the Subjects, which are Protestants, may provide and keep Arms, for their common Defence. [130]

If one applies English rights and practice to the construction of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, it is clear that the Amendment’s first clause is an amplifying rather than a qualifying clause, and that a general rather than a select militia was intended. In fact, every American colony formed a militia that, like its English model, comprised all able-bodied male citizens. [166] This continued to be the practice when the young republic passed its first uniform militia act under its new constitution in 1792. [167] Such a militia implied a people armed and trained to arms.

The Second Amendment should properly be read to extend to every citizen the right to have arms for personal defense. This right was a legacy of the English, whose right to have arms was, at base, as much a personal right as a collective duty. It is significant that the American right to keep arms was unfettered, unlike the English right, which was limited in various ways throughout its development.

Thus, in guaranteeing the individual right to keep and bear arms, and the collective right to maintain a general militia, the Second Amendment amplified the tradition of the English Bill of Rights for the purpose of preserving and protecting government by and for the people.