Sorry, my fault, let's take a different tack. Where does it say "personal" arms? I was under the impression that it just said arms.
To understand the intent and meaning, you have to go back and look at what was said in the constitutional ratification debates. Let’s assume they had written a 300 page document just on the right to bear arms. Seems like this would make things easier, but it was not necessary and would only lead to unwanted regulation. All that was necessary was to say that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. That made it real easy. Does it say anything about weapons that have the capability to do harm to more than one person? No, it does not. You can say it did not include anything about those weapons because they did not exist, but in fact they did. Cannon was known in that day to be able to take out many soldiers in a single shot. The use of illegal and privately owned cannon was a great asset to those revolutionaries, one that they recognized when framing the constitution. Like I said, it is all right there in the constitutional ratification debates. No clarifying of the right to keep and bear arms was tolerated, because clarifying meant restricting. In order to keep you safe from foreign and domestic governments, any weapon system that they can deploy against you, or you against them, must be legal to own without interference from any government. If you can use it, it is a personal weapon. If it can be used against any person or groups of persons, it is protected.
You must also look at the frame of mind of the people drafting the document. They had just won their independence from a repressive government by a fluke. They just happened to have better, more accurate weapons than British soldiers did. They probably would not have done so well if they did not. Do you think they would want us to be armed with weapons of less quality than the ones that may be used to oppress us someday? Bolt action hunting riffles are little good against an army with select fire weapons.
If you question the validity of the handgun as a weapon of deterrence against a hostile government, imagine how different WWII would have been if every Jew had owned and carried a handgun. Look at the trouble a few people armed with handguns caused the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto.
It would be easier to make the argument that hunting riffles are not protected under the 2nd than to make the argument that nukes are not protected. After all, the day a bolt action riffle does me much good in modern combat is the day we are invaded by an army of deer and elk.
down on this one...
