It speaks of a right belonging to the people, and forbids infringement of that right.
But only in the context of a well-regulated militia. The original draft of the Second also included a passage allowing for religious exemption from militia service. It's immediately followed by the third amendment, which limits the quartering of troops.
You see, here's the ugly little secret. Guns were RARE in colonial times. They were expensive (often costing a month's salary for a skilled craftsman) and difficult to maintain. They were slow to reload and only really accurate in volleys.
And now you understand why the board has an ignore function.
Oh, Bob is never going to put me on ignore. He's obsessed.
But I can see why you need one... reality is too much for you.
And again, the Fed Gov took 140 or so years before they put any restrictions on firearms.
Because for 140 years, most people didn't own guns and didn't need them. In fact, the reason why the NRA was originally formed after the Civil War was that a Union general was horrified by how ignorant of guns Americans were. It was only after criminals started using military-grade weapons to settle gang disputes that the government felt the need to start getting some control of it.
Now, here's the gag. Before the 1970's, everyone, including the NRA, was fine with it. When the Black Panthers started brandishing weapons, the NRA worked with Republican governors to ban open carry.
What changed was that the gun industry got greedy. When hunting started falling out of favor as a sport, they needed new markets. Scaring the hell out of average people by arming the criminals created that market. So suddenly, gun ownership became a "right".
Former Chief Justice Warren Burger (A Republican) said, "The gun lobby's interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American people by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies – the militia – would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires."