Even Scalia says reasonable restrictions were envisioned by the Framers, as do Alito and Thomas. I know of no libertarian or conservative Constitutional scholar who thinks otherwise. Clearly, there are some crackpots out there who masquerade as scholars who think otherwise. If nothing else, this thread has established that fact beyond any shadow of a doubt.
Hope some of you guys will put your money where your mouths are and pony up to defend the next Islamic citizen who insist the Second gives him the right to possess nukes. You go boys!!
I've never quoted Breyer's dissent.
No one with any understanding of this issue thinks the Second Amendment gave anyone any right to anything. All it did was prohibit the Federal Government from infringing on a right already belonging to each adult human being on the planet, which stems from the right to life, and therefore the right to defend one's own life and the life of innocent others, which means we also have the right to possess the means of doing this. Nukes aren't useful in this role, except in the context of nation states defending themselves from other nation states.
Now, the reason the Framers considered it good policy to prohibit the infringement of this right was that they understood the crucial role an armed citizenry played in providing a bulwark against tyranny. That's a different issue from the right. That's a question of good public policy, i.e., with regard to this particular human right, it's good public policy to prevent a central authority from violating it because history demonstrated that when central authorities were not prohibited from doing so, tyranny was the result, and the Founders were all about avoiding tyranny.
