Well well well. Yet another trigger issue (no pun intended) for people to debate.
Is it really getting that boring around here?
Yes. Still in an originalist interpretation, I'd have to say the Second Amendment was intended to permit private individuals to keep military grade weaponry. However, that was in an era where even military weaponry wasn't all that deadly.
True. But even the Founders saw how much military arms had changed (from bladed implements to projectile arms) and had to have known that military rifles would advance to something beyond the muzzleloaders being used then.
Actually rifles weren't used much as military weapons. The rate of fire was too slow compared to smoothbore muskets. Moreover, while the Founders were many things, prescient wasn't one of them. While they could expect improvement, I doubt that most of them would have grasped fact that the Industrial Revolution would prove to be far more profound than the American Revolution. Even if they were able to realize it, I'm doubtful they would have changed their opinions on the subject much. They didn't think they had prepared a Constitution that would last as long as it has. They fully expected it to be either much amended or replaced when its provisions no longer suited the American republic.
