Scalia and the 2nd Amendment

NY Times:

A majority of the Supreme Court appeared ready on Tuesday to embrace, for the first time in the country’s history, an interpretation of the Second Amendment that protects the right to own a gun for personal use.

...

The argument was lively and intense, running 22 minutes over its allotted hour and 15 minutes. Despite “starting afresh,” as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. put it, on a subject the court had not addressed since 1939, the justices appeared at least as well informed as the lawyers on minute details of English and American legal history.

The relevance of that history, on which both sides have their distinguished experts, remains to be seen. There was also a good deal of linguistic dissection of the Second Amendment’s text: “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.”

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And Justice Antonin Scalia told Mr. Dellinger that “the two clauses go together beautifully” if the Second Amendment was understood as an effort to guarantee that militias would not be “destroyed by tyrants.” The proper reading, Justice Scalia said, was: “Since we need a militia, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

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The District was arguing that the militia clause meant the right was restricted to an organized militia, buy Scalia's reading seems to make more sense especially in context of the time in which the amendment was written. In fact it is the most sensical reading of the amendment I have seen.