Reddit mentions of Armed in America: A History of Gun Rights from Colonial Militias to Concealed Carry

Yes, his name is Patrick J. Charles. Read his book called "Armed In America" which just came out in January. It tells you pretty much everything you'd ever want to know about the subject. He's an actual historian too so it's not just another bullshit gun lobby reimagining of The Good Ol' Days back when everybody agreed with them. (Which they didn't.)

Spoiler Alert: the 2A originally had nothing to do with any individual activities like self-defense or hunting or recreation. At the time of the Founding it only had a militia-related intention, and that one quickly faded as our centralized federal Army proved itself far superior to just having a bunch of farmers on stand-by.

But just because the gun lobby refuses to let it go, and the media continues to humor them, don't forget the main thing to keep in mind about the 2A's role today. Which is: It means whatever we want it to mean. We are not obligated to pretend it's 1789 when we apply the constitution today. We aren't obligated to be rigid "Originalists" like Justice Scalia. We can be like his opposite---and intellectual superior 10x over---Oliver Wendell Holmes who scoffed at the Originalist crap and said what we really just need is laws that work. Which means a results-based interpretation of the USC, not some time-traveling telepathy based approach that allows for absurd results that haven't made sense since powdered wigs were in.

So to sum up, it's:

(1) Since we know that the Founders were bitterly divided on the role that militias should play, anybody who claims to know "what the Founders wanted the 2A to mean" is full of crap. At best it was some uneasy half-measure that muted the harping on that particular issue just enough to let people move on and proceed to ratification. If you've ever sat on a committee containing people who genuinely don't like each other this will sound very familiar.

(2) Whatever the Founders understood the final version of the 2A to do, it was limited to militia-connected activities, which pretty much excludes everything the modern gun rights movement wants it to do. Which btw includes the whole Tyranny Insurance™ thing since the modern version of the state militias is the state Nat'l Guards. And complaints about Federal oversight/control of the Nat'l Guards go nowhere here since even at the Founding the compromise was that the states would keep their militias but the militia commanders would be federally assigned.

(3) None of this really matters anyway because whatever the Founders understood the 2A to do doesn't control modern policy choices because OWH and Legal Positivism. And having OWH standing behind you on this is like divebar-hopping with Bruce Lee---you won't lose.

EDIT: If you like this take on things then better cut-n-paste it now before it disappears in a few days. The nutter brigade apparently has a nutterbutter buddy among the Deity admins who's agreed to go around site-banning me whenever I have the temerity to suggest this sort of off-canon blasphemy. (Can't imagine why they wouldn't enjoy hearing about it tho, what with their sincere devotion to unvarnished historical truth and all :)

>All constitutional scholars understand that it was intended to protect the right of every US citizen to own firearms

Not true at all. In fact the author of the most recent and probably most exhaustive book ever written on the subject thinks that's a bunch of revisionist baloney. Check it out sometime.

But actually none of that really matters because we don't NEED TO know what the Founders intended the 2A to do because we don't live in 18th century America. We live in 21st century America and we need our laws to work for us, not them.