Originally <a href='http://www.sportsbookreview.com/forum/showthread.php?p=24578099'>posted</a> on 10/01/2015:

most americans interpretation of the second amendment is laughable.

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, then-Secretary of State:[30]
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.
are you part of a well-regulated militia? then the second amendment doesn't protect your right to own a gun.

for the first 200+ years of our country, this was the widely accepted interpretation of the second amendment. that's because it can't be interpreted in any other way.

proof of our gun control history:
In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that, "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence" and limited the applicability of the Second Amendment to the federal government.[9]
 In United States v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government and the states could limit any weapon types not having a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia".[10][11]

In the twenty-first century, the amendment has been subjected to renewed academic inquiry andjudicial interest.[11] In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court handed down alandmark decision that held the amendment protects an individual right to possess and carry firearms.[12]

[13] In McDonald v. Chicago (2010), the Court clarified its earlier decisions that limited the amendment's impact to a restriction on the federal government, expressly holding that the Fourteenth Amendmentapplies the Second Amendment to state and local governments to the same extent that the Second Amendment applies to the federal government.[14] Despite these decisions, the debate between various organizations regarding gun control and gun rights continues.[15]
the NRA is responsible for the misinterpretation of the second amendment.

look at the NRA's old position:
The turmoil of the 1960s — assassinations, street violence, riots — spurred Congress to pass the Gun Control Act of 1968, the first major piece of gun legislation since the New Deal. Supporters of gun control originally included California Gov. Ronald Reagan, who worried about the heavily armed Black Panthers.
The NRA didn’t like the 1968 law, viewing it as overly restrictive, but also didn’t see it as a slide toward tyranny. The top NRA officer, Franklin Orth, wrote in the association’s publication American Rifleman that “the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.”
The key word: “sportsmen.”


look what they are today: a proxy halfwit bundler for the republican party who convinces morons to vote against their economic self-interests because "they're coming for your guns."