"A well regulated Militia..."

The claim that the first part of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution somehow negates the second part simply will not die no matter how easily it's smacked down. Scrolling through Michael Malice's Twitter this morning brought me this gem:

turn your phone upside down @josh74564690

@michaelmalice Why does every conservative and libertarian leave out the first part??? “A well regulated militia.....” Doesn’t fit the narrative I guess 🤷‍♂️. I support the 2nd amendment. The whole thing.

turn your phone upside down @josh74564690

@CONSMILITIA @michaelmalice Honest question. Now that we have a permanent army in place, there is no need for citizen militias anymore. Isn’t the “right to bear arms part” conditional on the need for citizen militia? Im trying to write a better sentence for modern times to increase rights to bear arms

Here is the full text of the Second Amendment for reference:

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.

As I've pointed out before, the clause in question, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..." does not place any kind of limit on the right to bear arms, as this person is claiming, but rather guarantees the right of the people and of the States to form Militias for their defense and "security." To secure and guarantee the right of the people and of the States to form Militias, the Second Amendment also guarantees the right of everyone "to keep and bear Arms."

In other words, the Second Amendment guarantees two different rights: The right to form a militia, and the right to bear arms. The former is logically dependent on the latter, but there is nothing in the Constitution which states that the latter is legally dependent on the former. As I said in my previous blog post on this subject, "Nowhere does it say that this right 'shall not be infringed, unless...'" And, as per the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, the rights of the people and of the States in the U.S. Constitution do not need to be explicitly stated to be presumed to exist, but any restriction of their rights must be explicitly stated.

The claim that militias are unnecessary due to the existence of a standing army is, whether true or not, irrelevant. The right to form a militia exists regardless of whether or not it is "necessary" to actually practice in an objective sense, just as the right to not have troops quartered in our homes without our consent, per the Third Amendment, exists despite the fact that there is no risk of that happening regardless.

Language, especially somewhat archaic language, can be twisted to mean whatever a person needs it to mean to fit their agenda, but the Second Amendment is clear especially when considered in the historical context of the time. Anyone who wants to restrict the rights of Americans to own guns has to acknowledge that a constitutional amendment would be required to do so, or they can be ignored on the subject as they are nothing more than a con-artist.