"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
The un-infringable right of the people to keep and bear arms is necessary to the security of a free state, or was that a free State? The state of individual freedom or individual freedom within the State? Embedded as it is in a State's Constitution one must assume the framers of it were at least aware that their freedoms were constrained by the strictures of that State. Of course amongst the dissension and horse trading of ratification the capital letter strayed from State somewhere between the convention and the congressional vote: plus ca change, one of the beautiful things about Congress is it's super human idiosyncrasy, no individual could ever aspire to such blessed idiocy.
So we are left with some deliberate ambiguity about the nature of the enumerated freedom, whether it is that of a state in which individuals find themselves or of a State of individuals bound together by a common identity, but I really have any no complaint with that failed distinction: the freedom is ultimately, to the degree our society coheres, both. The freedom of individuals within States should remain as loosely stated as practicable as our rights should remain our own, unnamed, until they infringe on others. Explicit specification of rights, as a preventive means, too easily drifts to coercion when those unspecified simply vanish.
So we have rights within civilization that make us free to the extent we do not abuse the rights of others, but it is a constrained freedom: the freedom to be within civilization is constrained by the laws and norms of civilization, free to a point and for a point. But make no mistake, civilization is a coerced state, it is not a state of nature: people make it even as we make ourselves conform to its norms. Perhaps it is in our nature, but across the human platform that nature drifts enough to not be counted on as universal, and particularly with regard to our commitment to obligations to our fellows, we chafe to varying degrees in our relationship to that coerced state.
