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Originally Posted by BlueTrain
No, I believe the "well-regulated" part was that the militia be under government control.
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What you believe is immaterial.
What matters is the language as was used and understood when the words were placed on paper. It's a standard method of document interpretation, especially of documents from eras before our own... first understand what they would have meant based on the vocabulary used and how it was understood at the time by the authors and recipients, and only after understanding that can our own interpretation of that document be formed. If we're just impressing our own beliefs and interpretations upon a document without that basic bit of research, then there's little point to the document at all... we'll just have it saying what we want anyway.
There's no need to turn to the "well regulated" phrase to establish the constitutionality of regulating firearms ownership- the other rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are generally not understood as completely absolute. That is, the government can place certain restrictions on them, such as laws related to libel and slander in the exercise of free speech. Some types of speech are not considered protected by the first amendment. Likewise, some ownership of firearms is not considered protected by the Second Amendment. It seems to me that Scalia left the door open in his comments to this... there is much room for litigation to nail down EXACTLY what forms of ownership are unprotected. Very few people would choose to throw out all forms of regulation of firearms, but that does not mean that all forms of regulation of firearms will be welcomed.
While Scalia's exact words might raise our dander a bit, I really don't think he was saying anything we didn't know already.