People just have different ideas of what freedom means. Some want to claim there is no limit...i.e you have the same rights as the government...others feel people's rights should be limited for public safety. Ever wonder why you can buy a lottery ticket and gamble? But you can't start your own poker game legally?

The idea that citizens should have availability to the same weapons as the military was first put forth by Alexander Hamilton - the early forefathers already nixed that interpretation, but what the hell, suddenly Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams are all now staunch evangelicals by certain assholes rewritings of history.

Hope he dies of lead poisoning.

He probably thinks he has a right to drive drunk too.

Sometimes ya really wonder. That’s about all I could do as nothings capable of really shocking me any longer.

Weapons come and weapon go. There is no way that the First Amendment is giving anyone rights to own something that is not invented yet. That is not what it is all about. Nuclear weapons were not even thought of when this Amendment was written. Maybe Barton will now claim he meant a well regulated nuclear weapon.

I've heard a lot of people say - spoken and in print - that David Barton is essentially an idiot pandering to a religious audience.

The Second Amendment says, "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."

What seems to be missing in the interpretation of this Amendment is what constitutes a well regulated militia, who is responsible for forming and regulating it, and what arms are included. The broadest interpretation of "arms" would, imo, include nukes, but allowing personal ownership and control of this kind of weapon is insane. Also, the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution had no knowledge of these kinds of weapons of mass destruction. This point leads to the narrowest interpretation of this Amendment which would be consistent with those who want to argue original intent of the 14th Amendment to diqualify the SCOTUS ruling on same sex marriage. If the 14th Amendment cannot apply to same sex couples, then the 2nd can only apply to muskets available at the time the 2nd Amendment was ratified. Obviously, we have two extremes that are unacceptable and unworkable. Somewhere in the middle is a compromise that satisfies the intent of the Constitution's Peamble:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The weapons will be allowed by SCOTUS until all the liberals are gassed, shot, or otherwise gone. Then the Theocracy will come down on those guns and take them away from "Cold, dead, hands" of their own soldiers.

I think Dem's might do better if we phrase the debate for gun control in a single question: How many guns have been verifiably taken away from citizens during the period of gun control vs how many children (who are really no more special for the Right to Life) have died since the end of gun control? Seems to me the answer to that makes the solution harder to deny.