For more than 100 years, the 2nd Amendment was interpreted as giving the right to bear arms to militias and not individuals. Militias were seen as proto-military structures and were clearly and legally differentiated from individuals.
This is why the Framers took pains to say militia and not individual.
Then, special interests (like the NRA) started pumping money into the political system and they got the law changed. The term militia was reinterpreted by an activist Supreme Court to mean "individual". [This is an example of the "Living Constitution" where the Constitution reflects not the intent of the founders but the prevailing winds or whoever has enough money to game the system]
In order to ensure that this reinterpretation of the Constitution was broadly accepted, the special interests poured money into Rightwing Think Tanks and a wide assortment of mass media. The goal was to downplay the militia reference and convince naive voters that the word "individual" was an original part of the Constitution, if not directly than implied. [FYI: some gun advocates argue that militias are made of individuals; therefore, therefore the concept of militia and the concept of individual are functional equivalents. But this is ******* moronic because Governments are also made of individuals too, but the word "government" and the word "individual" have completely different meanings, rights, and regulations under the law]
After shitting all over the Constitution and reinterpreting it to mean whatever suited them, the rightwing and its very naive voters continued to hold the Democrats to a much different Constitutional standard. That is, whenever the Democrats pushed for a legal interpretation that didn't jive 100% with original Constitutional Language - even in situations where the original language was left vague - they flipped out and crushed them.
What is amazing is the degree to which they get away with this stuff. All it takes, I guess, are corrupt politicians and stupid voters . . . as the body bags created by lax gun laws continue to pile up.
Little children can be slaughtered by the dozens because the gun lobby owns our politicians. Indeed, the US suffers one gun masacre after another, but the Right says that nothing can be done because the Framers wanted retarded psychopaths to have easy access to guns and high capacity magazines without so much as a background check. But, somehow, if 3 people die by two religious "lone-wolves" (with zero ties to terrorist groups), than the rightwing goes into action, asking us to turn Washington into a Soviet Style surveillance state ala Bush & the Patriot Act.
From Watergate to Iran-Contra. . . from illegal wiretapping to fabricated war intelligence, the USA is being slowly destroyed by a corrupt group of radicals and their moronic talk radio hordes. Is it any wonder that they continue to shred the Constitution?
