the karens will never be pleased until they control everything and the only thing you're allowed to do without supervision and permission will be breathing; 

 

In 2001, a Los Angeles Times op-ed laid out what the author believed was the definitive limit of Second Amendment protection. American citizens, the author wrote, had the constitutional right to own flintlock muskets and pistols — and nothing more.

“I believe that the framers of the Bill of Rights intended that the right of every American citizen to bear flintlock muskets and pistols should not be infringed,” the author wrote. “I believe that American citizens today — without fingerprinting, without a license, without a background check — ought to be able to own as many flintlock muskets and pistols as they want. If they want to fill up their garages with them, that should be nobody’s business but their own.”

The piece was satirical in framing but earnest in substance. The argument — that the Second Amendment’s “arms” should be limited to 18th-century weapons technology — was a serious gun-control position in 2001 and remained so for the next two decades. Variations on it appeared regularly in mainstream commentary, in academic legal arguments, and occasionally in judicial opinions.

Twenty-five years later, the position has reversed. The Associated Press published a piece on May 14 taking the opposite stance: that the lack of regulatory infrastructure around muzzleloading firearms is itself a problem requiring legislative attention.

TTAG covered the AP story and the underlying antique firearm regulatory framework at length last week. The piece you’re reading isn’t about that legal landscape — it’s about how dramatically the gun-control commentariat’s position has shifted on what the Second Amendment supposedly does and doesn’t protect.............more..........