But the underlying philosophical issues don't depend on who happens to be sitting on the supreme court, or even what it says in the constitution. And this always trips up the pro-gunners. Because part of pro-gunner indoctrination involves memorizing long lists of talking points about the second amendment. But when asked to actually give a philosophical justification for why gun ownership should be considered a fundamental civil right, alongside things like free speech and fair trials, beyond "becuz its in da constatooshun", you just get blank stares.

At the time of the BOR, standing armies vs militias was a significant issue (along with peacetime quartering of troops in private homes), so it is not difficult to see why RKBA was elevated to the level of a constitutionally protected right. But, today, things are different, of course, and militias and quartering of troops are non-issues. The third amendment is basically obsolete, as would the second be if not for right-wing gun extremists who have managed to twist 2A into a requirement that the US must endure levels of gun violence and homicide that the rest of the civilized world would find completely intolerable.

But, regardless of what the framers thought, or how Scalia decides to interpret it, the most important point to me is that, gun ownership, in today's world, has nothing to do with maintaining and participating in a functioning democracy or a free civil society. A gun is an object, which can be both useful and dangerous, and it should be regulated as such, without all the hyperbolic talk of "freedom" and "tyranny". As I pointed, there are plenty of free, prosperous, democracies in the world with rational gun laws (almost all of them, in fact), and the people in places like the UK and Canada would simply laugh if you suggest that thousands of them should die every year for the sake of "gun rights".

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11721025#post75