@ARE_you_kidding_me The phrase “well regulated miliita” doesn’t exist in a vaccum. That exact language was used in other documents at the time of the founding. It actually applied to the slave militias in the south. See the first link. Do you have a source that supports your claim that the phrase meant regulated by the citizens?
I think there are 2 reasonable readings:
1. Is supported by the first link I posted. That the southern states relied on slave militias to round up escaped slaves in order to preserve and maintain Slavery. They had a fear that the government would try to disarm these militias at some time in the future as a loophole meant to defeat slavery by making it impossible to enforce. In this interpretation, the 2nd amendment is seen as a compromise to appease slaveholding states’ concerns.
2. The amendment was designed to prevent the federal government from disarming state militias (roughly equivalent to the National Guard) such that states had enough force to resist a hypothetical overtaking of the government by a tyrannical force at the federal level. Remember there was a large suspicion at the time of centralized, federal power.
At no point is it reasonable to assume that “well regulated militia” means Bob, Sam, and Roy can get together and call themselves a militia of the citizens. That’s an example of a “poorly regulated militia.”
Furthermore, even if both interpretations are wrong (and they’re not wrong), the right isn’t an unlimited right. We don’t have the right to keep and bear Nukes for example. The amount of firepower a single person can wield now is likely beyond the comprehension of the founders. You couldn’t grab a couple of handguns and massacre dozens of people in less than 2 minutes back then. It’s perfectly reasonable to put statutory limits on guns even if I’m wrong about the “well regulated miliitia” phrasing (I’m not). We have the freedom of speech, but you can still go to jail if you use your speech to commit fraud and trick people out of their money, or use your speech to share government secrets with a foreign power, or yell “fire” in a theater and cause a stampede that hurts people, or use your language to sexually harass other people, or threaten violence against others… You get the idea.