Oh bullshit. If that was the point of the amendment, they sure did a phenomenally shitty job of putting that intent into writing. “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” does not at first or even twentieth glance read as “people should be allowed to own as much weaponry as they want in case the government turns evil”. (It also doesn’t even read as a coherent sentence, but that’s somewhat beside the point.)
Why does every gun nut seem to forget and/or intentionally ignore the “well-regulated militia” part of this fucking thing? The United States had no standing army in 1789, so it made perfect sense to ensure that the citizenry could be called up to defend the United States in times of war with the expectation that they already had the necessary training and hardware. We have a professional military now; the second amendment is redundant in this context, and expecting everyday people with sixteen assault rifles and zero training to be able to go toe-to-toe with a highly-trained multi-billion-dollar professional fighting force with both land, sea, and air superiority is both stupid and dangerous. The best case outcome to such a scenario would be permanent military occupation of the United States, ala Afghanistan and Iraq.
We proscribe rules and restrictions around rights in this country all the time. The right to vote, IMO the most sacrosanct of rights in any democracy, is under constant assault by Republicans for infractions far less common and damaging to the foundation of the republic than mass shootings. The only time it’s functionally impossible to institute some form of enforced responsibility or consequence for a right seems to be when guns (and only ever specifically guns, not “arms” in general) are involved. That’s fucked.
