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Overall I see your point, but I'm not sure this bit is true:
In reality, its become a pointless distraction to any debate thats going to bring about any meaningful change.
When, as far as I understand, it forms part of the legal challenges when gun legislation is attempted at a state level.
hugo7-
With the 2008 SCOTUS ruling in the Heller case then state level legal challenges on gun ownership are all but meaningless. That forms an overarching federal position on constitutionality that states can only strengthen rather than erode.
The depth at which gun culture is ingrained into the American psyche is such that, for meaningful and sustainable change, it will need to be dismantled piecemeal. Given that SCOTUS has ruled that there is no requirement for involvement in a militia as a part of the right to bear arms, any legal challenges citing the preferatory clause, federal, state or otherwise, is fundamentally pointless.
The_Seldom_Killer
A lot of heavy weather has come about over the first part of the 2nd Amendment. In reality, its become a pointless distraction to any debate thats going to bring about any meaningful change.
Firstly, the prefatory clause around militias isn't static. The drafts, ratified copies, signed copies and various published copies all differ. As such, no side on the debate (of which there are more than two) can make any reasonable claim to know the mind of any of the framers, nor that they were acting in unified concensus. Certainly the right and the clause cannot be held absolutely in tandem.
Secondly, the amendment has been incorporated in to many legal cases argued at many different level up to the SCOTUS and in relation to many different issues, including other amendments, that striking it as now redundant isn't a matter of debating the preferatory clause. Nor can you simply strike down the right without unpicking all of the subsequent legislation at both federal and state level and rehearing a multitude of cases. Any failing of which would return the amendment to effect unchanged.