Blue Wolf:
You summarise the 2nd as saying:
"A well regulated militia being essential to the maintenance of a free state, the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed."
That's broadly how I remember it too.
Back in frontier days, the only way in which a militia man could 'effectively bear arms' was by keeping his weapons at home. But the constitution saw the right to bear arms as being part and parcel of maintaining 'a well regulated militia' and explicitely gave the people that right in order to maintain a free state (which implicitely meant against British or foreign aggression). That right was NOT granted in order that the citizens could take the law into their own hands, nor even so that they could protect themselves against criminals. There was no individual right to bear arms granted outside the framework of this 'well regulated (people's) militia', though the NRA would like us to believe otherwise.
One could argue that the maintenance of the National Guard and Reserve (and indeed America's maintenance of a standing Army, not envisaged when the Constitution was being framed) gives the people the right to bear arms under the auspices of those organisations, and thereby fulfills the requirements of the 2nd Ammendment.
I don't believe that the UK's outright ban on handguns (even within a sporting environment) has made us safer, and I'm not convinced that citizens should necessarily be prohibited from keeping a non-automatic, relatively small calibre handgun in the home in order to protect their property and family. But the right to carry concealed weapons in public is plainly insane, while the right of ordinary people to own semi-automatic and automatic weapons seems similarly barking.