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In reply to the discussion: What guns were like when the 2nd amendment was written [View all]DirkGently
(12,151 posts)A person could "bear" a Stinger missile, hand grenades, a suitcase nuke, nerve gas, etc. ad infinitum. No one thinks that all modern "bearable" weapons should be kept in the home or carried by civilians.
None of the modern argument from proponents of "The Second Amendment" has anything to do with Constitutional principles or democracy or anything else. The idea was that colonists could have law enforcement and militias in lieu of a standing army, not for civilian yahoos to nurture fantasies of fighting the government or preparing for the zombie apocalypse or whatever. Above all, bearing arms was to be "well-regulated."
The discussion today isn't even about "arms." It's about guns. Just guns. Only guns. Guns and guns and more guns.
What we have today is a deliberately warped, pseudo-religious philosophy developed for the sole purpose of selling expensive guns to a lot of hobbyists and a fair number of dangerous nuts. The magazines are full of ridiculous "tactical gear" catering to a fantasy that civilians can be "ready" for some unspecified future disaster for which all of it would be fully useless if it ever actually occurred.
The Founding Fathers would vomit at the thought of the modern NRA and its lunatic arguments that a crowded modern society should allow private ownership of massive firepower anywhere, by anyone.