LogFAQs > #965700016

yemmy posted...

Bro they are literally banning handguns in Canada right now.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Constitutional scholars who spend their life on that shit go with this:

The overwhelming consensus was that the Second Amendment gave state militias a right to obtain and bear arms, but it did it not give individuals any rights. The words of the Second Amendment are ungrammatical and difficult to understand in the best of circumstances. But if you look at the history and context of the amendment, including other references to state militias in the Constitution, it suggests that the amendment only applied to state militias.

1977 is really a key moment here, because thats when the National Rifle Association went from being a largely apolitical gun-safety organization to a mobilized political operation that was dedicated to fighting gun control. It both reflected and reinforced the growing conservatism of the Republican Party generally.
You had Orrin Hatch, when he was chairman of the judiciary subcommittee, putting forth a major report [PDF] that said all the courts were wrong about the Second Amendment. You have Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court starting to advocate a renewed understanding of the Second Amendment. The country appears to have gotten more sympathetic to the argument that guns make people safer, not more dangerous.
The idea that the Second Amendment gives individuals a right to bear arms was advocated so forcefully, so broadly and so persuasively that Democrats gave up on fighting the issue.