Thoughts on the 2nd Amendment

I tossed off this comment:
I own guns. I think law abiding people should be allowed to own guns for hunting and such. I read the 2nd amendment as preserving the rights of the individual states to have a standing army which they might use to blunt the power of the federal government. Nice idea at the time. But history has erased any use for this provision.
A friend asked:
Amendments 1, 3-10 apply to individuals, but #2 applies to states?
and another friend provided a link to an interesting article:

http://saf.org/LawReviews/Stearns1.htm

My attempt at a response:

It gets complex. As I recall, there was a general dislike of the idea of a standing Federal army. Plus the English had confiscated individual weapons. Then there was the simple fact that there was, at the time, little real difference between a hunting weapon and a weapon for war. So the way people thought about National defense was in terms of Militias and individually provided weapons.
However, I would also expect that the founders would have not objected if one of the smaller states, as an inducement to Civic Virtue, required all who owned guns to belong to the local militia. You have to remember that there are no Libertarians at that time; the idea that the government should provide inducements to promote Civic Virtue was common.
I also expect that the founders would have had no problem denying weapons to people outside of those who could vote. The article referenced does not go into this but it was the Knights and Yeomen who were expected to have weapons for their own defense and for the collective defense. Not the peasantry. And generally not the town folk. Times had changed by the 1770s but society was not at all egalitarian.

We no longer have the need for every yeoman to muster up with their own kit ready to leap to the common defense. We now have and expect to have a professional army. The power of the armed forces is checked by training and norms of behavior we instill in all members plus a politically engaged populace who would not support the army taking over.
The founders did not think this enough. Over our 200+ years it has proved enough for us.
Other countries have had other experiences.
As things stand now, no one fields an army with deer rifles. And the weapons one might have for personal defense are not what you would use to over-through the government.
Times have changed, our laws should also.