Hall of Fame

Well, an important point to note is that the Amendments in our Bill of Rights builds is constructed so that each subsequent right builds off the previous. They're ordered from most important (and broad) to more specific and granular. So even in that era, there was a concept of due process and recourse. As such, taking away any right or property required that action to take place. The issue now, with the "No Fly List" for example is there is no due process. You can be placed on the last at the whim of a government individual without notification or due process, and once you're on it, there is no reasonable recourse to be removed from it. In the case of lets say, a restraining order... You ask a judge to place a restraint on an individuals freedom and have to state your case and cite evidence. If a restraining order is issued, you have the right to contest it before the judge and appeal it before a jury. Make sense? Yes, in fact there were already repeating weapons, but obviously not automatic or even semi automatic. That being said, if you take the time to read through the arguments of the time that led to the legislation, as well as the context of what the arguments and legislation were drafted from, its pretty clear what the intent was. In fact, they essentially state it outright. The second amendment was drafted to protect against enemies foreign and domestic, with particular emphasis on curtailing our own government considering we had just finally won our freedom. The people of the era we're very aggressively / jealously looking to protect that new found freedom and at the time, few even wanted a centralized government. It sounds odd in this day and age, but imagine the idea of never having taxes and then suddenly a group comes out of nowhere and starts claiming you owe a cut of your hard work to them. Our charter included a prohibition against a standing army for that specific reason: to ensure the government could never be powerful enough to infringe on the rights of the people, but most especially for people from another place to impose their will on a population that they didn't live and work amongst (and therefore remain directly accountable to). Once we as a people realized we couldn't really grow and prosper without cooperation amongst the states, we decided to setup a charter to organize ourselves into a sort of co-op of sorts. This was the Articles of Confederation, which ultimately failed because it limited government to such an extent that it couldn't function. Once that collapsed, they went back to the drawing board and start drafting a new version which became our Constitution. Understand the mindset, however, in that they were doing all they could to ensure that the government would be restrained and would always be subject to the will of the people, with the exception of the rights specified in our Bill of Rights, which supersedes everything else. In any case, if you study it, the exceptions that allow for our army (but not a standing army), clearly state that the people are to be afforded the same access to weaponry as that of the common soldier. The purpose of that was to level the playing field should the army turn against the people, and the way in which its phrased (as well as the context of the argument) was that they had no idea what the future held, but were in fact well aware that there would be technological progress in weapons of war as well as war strategy. In fact, the Revolutionary War was actually won through a paradigm shift inn war strategy to something that would later be looked as as guerrilla warfare. Likewise, they would be well aware of exponential improvement in weapons of war as they had largely lived through an era where it went from sword fighting to black powder based muskets to the start of bullets and rifling. So they may not have envisioned an AR-15, but they were very specific that whatever was issued to the general army, wouldn't be kept from the people. Crazy as it sounds today, you could actually be fined and imprisoned if you didn't maintain a serviceable weapon and a state of readiness (which largely meant that you were good to go at any moment and we're proficient). Before any cry babies start throwing out the idea of flame throwers and nuclear missiles, the legislation makes specific mention to the general army. Flame throwers and nuclear missiles are both specialized hardware / munitions and not wielded by the average soldier. Again, the purpose was to be able to give the general army something to think twice about should they ever be commanded to go against the people. If you study history, you'll see in essentially every example of genocide that it's occurred to a disarmed or recently disarmed populace. Granted, the founding fathers didn't have Adolf Hitler and his disarmament of the Jews in the 1930's as a reference, but they did have a clear understanding of this idea and the first shot of the Revolutionary War was in response to English soldiers confiscating guns.

Hunk of sheep.