It seems to me that part of the regulation of a militia would involve deciding who bears what arms. That's certainly the case in an actual army. For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying that the words "well-regulated" mean that there should be restrictions on exactly who can bear what arms under what circumstances. Only that (1) "the right to do X shall not be infringed" doesn't, to me, imply that there must be no restrictions at all on doing X, and that (2) the context of a "well-regulated militia" seems to make it particularly hard to claim that the 2A makes it illegitimate to have the sorts of regulation that a well-regulated militia might have.

"Shall not be infringed" is pretty clear language. And you can -kind of- finagle the language to imply that regulation is acceptable, but it requires finagling, which doesn't speak to an intent to faithfully interpret.

I can't find quite that; only a provision forbidding states to "own [...] ships of war in time of peace". Have I missed something? In any case, it's not clear to me what distinction you're drawing between "capital" weapons and others (it seems like some reasonable interpretations of that term might justify some restrictions on ownership of guns, which AIUI you are opposed to).

Hm. I misremembered that article. So apparently it didn't forbid individuals from owning what were, at the time, weapons which posed significant threats to the government.

On the grounds that you have to work to get the money to pay? I'm not convinced. If you can get the money from savings, or by selling other assets, or by asking friends to make donations, the child support authorities will not mind. Again, I'm not defending the US child support system (not least because I don't know enough about it to know what I think) but it seems about as obvious to me as anything can be that it isn't the same thing as slavery, which is what the 13th Amendment was attempting to forbid.

For the poor, or poorly-connected, it amounts to the same thing.

I'm not sure what to say other than: No, I completely disagree, and that seems an obviously unreasonable position. By all means say that if any part of the Constitution is ignored, then the Constitution is no longer being given the authority it should have; but that is an entirely different thing from saying that the whole thing is a dead letter.

What makes it substantively different? If, from a practical perspective, we only do what it says when we agree with what it says in the first place, what does it substantively provide?