Nonetheless, the point is that the passage quoted has zip to do with self defense, and the Heller majority did not say that you have a right (individual or otherwise) to oppose the federal government on grounds of tyranny.
I don't deny that the second amendment grants an individual right, but if the people in 1791 were evaluating it based on the plain reading of the passage from the Federalist Papers you quoted, then Joe Everyman would likely have thought it related to the right to own guns for use in the militias and in killing "tyrannical" federal employees. I am not sure that the latter was endorsed by the Heller majority. (The Court did endorse several other reasons for the amendment unstated in the text of the Constitution, but those other reasons are neither here nor there as they were unstated in the quote from the Federalist papers as well.)
As the Whiskey Rebellion showed, though, you have to win your fight to win the debate over what is "actionable tyranny". If you lose, you're just a "criminal" and dealt with as criminal. If you do win, though, then the "legality" of your insurrection becomes an irrelevancy, as what you say is the law, by force of arms. The right to secede from the Union wasn't foreclosed by the Constitution (as the Supreme Court decided in Texas v. White), it was and is foreclosed by the fact that the non-seceding states and/or the federal government will beat secessionists into submission, by force of arms. And if they lose that fight, then the secessionists have the de facto right to secede, the text of the Constitution be damned.
From our review of founding-era sources, we conclude
that this natural meaning was also the meaning that
“bear arms” had in the 18th century. In numerous instances,
“bear arms” was unambiguously used to refer to
the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia.
The most prominent examples are those most relevant to
the Second Amendment: Nine state constitutional provisions
written in the 18th century or the first two decades
of the 19th, which
enshrined a right of citizens to “bear
arms in defense of themselves and the state” or “bear arms
in defense of himself and the state.”
8 It is clear from those
formulations that “bear arms” did not refer only to carry-
Parker v. District of Columbia, 311 F. Supp. 2d 103, 109
(2004). The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit, construing his complaint as seeking the right to
render a firearm operable and carry it about his home in
that condition only when necessary for self-defense,2 reversed,
see Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F. 3d 370,
401 (2007). It held that the Second Amendment protects
an individual right to possess firearms and that the city’s
total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that
firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when
necessary for self-defense, violated that right. See id., at
395, 399–401. The Court of Appeals directed the District
Court to enter summary judgment for respondent.
We granted certiorari. 552 U. S. ___ (2007).
We turn to the phrases “keep arms” and “bear arms.”
Johnson defined “keep” as, most relevantly, “[t]o retain;
not to lose,” and “[t]o have in custody.” Johnson 1095.
Webster defined it as “[t]o hold; to retain in one’s power or
possession.” No party has apprised us of an idiomatic
meaning of “keep Arms.” Thus, the most natural reading
of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have
weapons.”
At the time of the founding, as now, to “bear” meant to
“carry.” See Johnson 161; Webster; T. Sheridan, A Complete
Dictionary of the English Language (1796); 2 Oxford
English Dictionary 20 (2d ed. 1989) (hereinafter Oxford).
When used with “arms,” however, the term has a meaning
that refers to carrying for a particular purpose—
confrontation. In Muscarello v. United States, 524 U. S.
125 (1998), in the course of analyzing the meaning of
“carries a firearm” in a federal criminal statute, JUSTICE
GINSBURG wrote that “
urely a most familiar meaning is,
as the Constitution’s Second Amendment . . . indicate:
‘wear, bear, or carry . . . upon the person or in the clothing
or in a pocket, for the purpose . . . of being armed and
ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict
with another person.’ ” Id., at 143 (dissenting opinion)
