Yhe right to bear arms

In the last number of "the Economist" ("Johnston") there is a very interesting dicussion about the meaning of the second amendments, which states the right to "bear arms"; after the study of a large online corpus of english of the XVIII century, it seems evident that "to bear arms"  had not the meaning of "to varry arms"  but "to belong to an army". It must be rememberd that in the XVIII century only the nobles could enter the army, at least as officials; therefore the true meaning of the second amendmentt is that it cannot be forbidden to the commons to enter the army. Me too I was completely mistaken about the meaning of the article. Of course this does not mean that the articlle cannot be interpreted in the sense that American Constitution protects self-defence, since many state  constitutions of the same age admitted it expressely, but the case is nonetheless interesting.