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A group of University Of Washington students are being called vigilantes after they armed themselves with handguns and tried to set up patrols on University Avenue and other areas around campus where students have been attacked over the past year.

Stanley Luong and Luis Garcia have armed themselves. Both are assault victims.

Luong says, "Some guy just broke down the window, reached in and unlocked the door and came in and robbed us."

Garcia says, "Four men jumped out of a car. They assaulted me and threw my girlfriend to the ground and they attempted to rob me. Two times I've been jumped. I said it's not going to happen a third time."

So both got a concealed license permit and bought handguns. Now they walk with pistols in their pockets...looking for the bad guys.

Luong says, "I don't know if it's illegal to walk around and be bait. I'm kind of fishing for robbers."

Garcia says, "I believe the police they come after the fact. They aren't there when the incident is occurring I believe this is just the fastest means of protecting oneself and those around you? and so I decided to take that measure and execute my second amendment to bear arms."

According to the UW Daily Newspaper, there have been ten assaults and robberies in the area in just the past two months.

A protester named William Kostric showed up at President Obama’s New Hampshire Townhall meeting wearing a holstered gun on his leg and carrying a sign that read: “It is Time to Water the Tree of Liberty.” The sign referred to Thomas Jefferson’s quote that, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” With this background, the gun-toting protester was clearly calling for murder, suicide or both.

How else could you interpret his sign? What other liquid, besides blood, did he have in mind for “watering” the liberty tree? Serious conservatives make a big mistake when they defend such sick and irresponsible calls for violence.

Now is the time to speak out against gun violence. Now is the time to take responsibility for our actions. Now is the time to make our communities safer. Now is the time to support good legislation... Now is the time to give back our guns. Now is the time for me to lead by example.

A Second Amendment victory in District of Columbia v. Heller would have two important effects: First, it would save the lives of D.C. residents.  Second, it would promote gun-rights consciousness in the U.S. - school textbook publishers will no longer be able to pretend the Second Amendment pertains only to the National Guard and students will learn about the Second Amendment as an ordinary right, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights.

Conservatives should be hopeful that Kopel's predictions will ring true in light of this constitutional decision.  D.C. residents can now enjoy their full set of rights thanks to the 5-4 ruling upholding the Second Amendment.

To read more about gun rights and conservative principles in Townhall, get a free copy today by visiting www.gettownhall.com.  Already sold?  Visit http://magazine.townhall.com/jihad to order your 12 month subscription of Townhall and, for a limited time, receive a free copy of Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad by Andrew McCarthy.

Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the people.”

We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans.

Scalia goes on to define what "arms" are:

The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity.

And then he looks at the history of the period when the Constitution was written:

The phrase “keep arms” was not prevalent in the written documents of the founding period that we have found, but there are a few examples, all of which favor viewing the right to “keep Arms” as an individual right unconnected with militia service.

... 

From our review of founding-era sources, we conclude that this natural meaning was also the meaning that “bear arms” had in the 18th century. In numerous instances, “bear arms” was unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia.