Likewise, consider the New Hampshire Ex Post Facto Article:
Retrospective laws are highly injurious, oppressive and unjust. No such laws, therefore, should be made, either for the decision of civil causes, or the punishment of offences. 37
One can probably imagine situations where retrospective laws, especially civil ones, are not in fact injurious, oppressive, and unjust (or at least not highly so). 38 Even those who believe that all ex post facto laws are highly unjust would probably concede that some reasonable judges could take a different view. And yet the provision bans all ex post facto laws, not only the highly unjust ones.
These provisions, like constitutional rights provisions more generally, don't just announce a purpose and ask courts to do whatever the judges think fits the purpose. Their enactors could have done so -- they could have broadly required "the trial of the facts near where they happen," or required "the trial of facts in a way conducive to the security of the life, liberty, and estate of the citizen," or banned "highly injurious, oppressive and unjust" laws generally. But they instead chose to impose much more specific constraints, constraints that are both over- and underinclusive.
Those who enacted the Bills of Rights apparently didn't trust courts to decide for themselves what's "conducive to the security of the citizen" or what's "highly injurious, oppressive and unjust," or even what's "near." They meant to constrain courts, not to leave them with complete discretion to do justice any way they think best. The enactors had broad ends in mind, but they chose to serve those ends by enacting into law some particular means. 39
So it is with the Second Amendment. The Framers may have intended the right to keep and bear arms as a means towards the end of maintaining a well-regulated militia -- a well-trained armed citizenry 40 -- which in turn would have been a means towards the end of ensuring the security of a free state. But they didn't merely say that "a well-regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State" 41 (as some state constitutions said), or "Congress shall ensure that the Militia is well-regulated," or even "Congress shall make no law interfering with the security of a free State." Rather, they sought to further their purposes through a very specific means. 42
Congress thus may not deprive people of the right to keep and bear arms, even if their keeping and bearing arms in a particular instance doesn't further the Amendment's purposes. As the other state constitutional provisions show, there should be nothing surprising in this. When you mean to check government authority, 43 you do this by imposing specific commands on the government, even if they sometimes don't match your purposes perfectly, rather than by letting the government decide how it thinks the purposes can best be served.
