A Personal Right to Bear Arms

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: "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." Having avoided the matter for some 70 years, the U.S. Supreme Court soon will hear a case brought by Washington, D.C, against a resident who would claim his Constitutional right "to keep and bear arms," specifically a personal defensive handgun such as the common Colt ACP, or semi-automatic Colt pistol pictured here.
In brief, principally cities have tried with mixed results to ban handguns; handguns remain lethally employed in all U.S. cities, banned or not, legal or not. Those who would deny citizens their Second Amendment right argue at length over the wording of the Amendment, specifically "a well regulated militia," as allowing State infringement via regulation. But surely the amendment includes an individual's free state, as well as a State's free state. Some have even gone so far as to say that the word militia can mean only a State regulated Militia.
While browsing Benjamin Franklin's autobiography (see BF below), himself a framer and signer of our Constitution, I find that he was satisfied with Pennsylvania, but "regretted" two things, no provision for defense (England, France, and Spain were at war and a possible threat) and no provision for complete education of youth. He solved the first problem by writing a public pamphlet, "Plain Truth," strongly stating Pennsylvania citizens' predicament and proposing an association of citizens to address the problem. With a draft document for a citizen militia in hand, he then convened public meetings and received more than 10,000 volunteers, who "all furnished themselves as soon as they could with arms, formed themselves into companies and regiments, chose their own officers and met every week to be instructed in the manual exercise ... of military discipline." Indeed, Franklin's militia bought cannon from Boston, built an earth and log defense battery with funds from a lottery, and borrowed eighteen cannon from New York, after getting then Governor Clinton drunk on Madeira.
Founder Franklin's stated actions as a person, in concert with other citizens, to form and fund and arm a militia much at its own expense, forcefully suggests that he supported the simplest reading of the Second Amendment, that the Federal government may not infringe upon an individual's free state, including possessing and as necessary employing defensive armed force to maintain that state.