[ceejayoz]

Keep reading!

> In Second Amendment cases, this Court applies the Amendment to semi-automatic handguns even though those did not exist in 1791 or 1868.

"Shall not be infringed" apparently applies to unimaginably better weaponry, but they couldn't have anticipated immigrants being pregnant.

[fakedang]

Does the right to bear arms extend to stuff like MANPADS, tanks and fighter aircraft?

[ceejayoz]

I think that’s the only logical conclusion of the “shall not be infringed” absolutists. They shy away from admitting it, though.

“Oh, those aren’t arms. They’re, uh, destructive devices!”

[lazide]

Most would be happy to allow them. Let god sort ‘em out, and all.

[ceejayoz]

I tend to doubt it. Reagan and the NRA were quite happy to regulate guns when the Black Panthers showed up with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

[cucumber3732842]

Hint: If someone says "yeah sure manpads are fine" they're not some fox news boomer who adores Reagan.

[ceejayoz]

It's still very much a phenomenon. Look how the NRA and GOP handled the Philando Castile case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Philando_Castile), for example. Suspicious silence, for the most part.

[camgunz]

The motivations underlying 2A are:

Protection

Participation in military / national defense

Resistance of tyrannical government

Hunting

Depending upon whether or not you think the Constitution is a living document, a modern reading of 2A could reasonably include things like explosives, drones, radar, etc., but maybe exclude things like nukes, fighter jets, biochemical weapons, other purely offensive things. I'm very pro-gun regulation, but I think this would be a fine reading as long as we're doing the same thing across the Constitution, i.e. substantive due process.

But while conservatives love modern readings of 2A, they deny modern readings of anything else. So they have to find some way to fit their desired outcomes into originals/textualism, leading to absurd dilemmas like "either the founders meant muskets or they meant nukes", or tortured standards like scanning all firearm or self-defense laws in effect around the late 18th century to discern intent, which predictably do not emerge from consistent foundational principles because their authorship is scattered across space and time and thus really are no help... unless of course you cherry pick shamelessly.

[nradov]

It's an interesting legal question. Around the time that the US Constitution was written there were private citizens who owned artillery pieces and even entire warships.

[cucumber3732842]

It ought to.

If you can afford either of those you have enough invested in the system that you probably won't use it lightly and if you don't you should and that's kind of the system's problem.

[ubertaco]

Ah yes, that well-known link between having immense wealth and being characterized by restraint and regard for the well-being of others.

That's why Elon Musk is both the richest man in modern history and also the most upright, caring, and self-restrained one too!