Sorry to be contrary, but the issue at hand is simple, and doesn't take any nuance to speak of. The 2nd Amendment places significant political power in the hands of the citizens, offseting the central power the government's army. Some here in the US do not trust this distribution of power, and that is why the legal fiction created by the "collective rights" crowd. They want rule by a "virtuous" minority, irrespective of the desires of the majority, and are willing to ignore the plain text of the Constitution to get their way.

With respect to the situation in other countries, and the middle east in particular, we would do well to remember the generations of internicene warfare between the various tribes and sects living there. The best we can hope for is to arm the citizens generally, instead of selective disarmament (which is often the case in these countries). This won't make the government's job easier, but then the 2nd Amendment wasn't supposed to do that here, either. Rather, it should give majorities pause when considering the cost of violence against minorities - as the 14th Amendment should have done with the right to armed self-defense in the ante-bellum South. We want to avoid the case where the government owns all the guns, or uses the equivalent of "Jim Crow" laws to expose minorities to the unrestrained will of the state. That would be a real and positive change in the state of affairs.

In responding to a Balkan comment, Professor Levinson remarks:

". . . I am not aware of any other national constitution that includes anything similar to the Second Amendment (though I've not made a comprehensive search). It is, by and large, a national idiosyncracy of the US. That being said, I still find it a point worth making that members of the Bush Administration (and most others as well) seem unable to draw any implications from the history of the Second Amendment for contemporary constitution drafting."

Well, at the time of the Constitution's creation, to envision a government that would serve a nation of sovereign citizens in their quests for self-actualization/self-realization through liberty was idiosyncratic--at the least. "Insane" was probably closer to what most of the waning and conservative monarchies and autocracies of Europe thought of the new liberalism. Like RKV, I'm not persuaded there is much analogy between requiring hostile factions to lay down their arms in a peace settlement and the conditions under which the Second Amendment was conceived.

Like the proverbial iceberg, I think the major part of Professor Levinson's issue lurks below the water, and that is the demise of the liberal ideal, but generally, not merely in Bush's view of foreign policy. With Bush, as well as with most modern politicians, the idea of serving a few hundred million sovereign citizens is laughable. And in that group, those who are not cynics and elitists are pragmatists. All the real action is in the government and the only function of citizens is to pay taxes and vote according to the prevailing propaganda. The Second Amendment is not a derivative of a founding principle many of them hold dear, but a political reality they must (for now) live with and serve with their lips. I don't imagine the politicos in this country dream of a democracy in Iraq or elsewhere that will serve sovereign weapon-owning citizens, but rather of something that will whip them in line and actualize them as consumers of our goods.