Everybody is dancing around the point and nobody is getting to it.
Blathering about assault rifles vs. hunting rifles
The second ammendment is about nothing more than an armed populace. The population, citizens, prolitariat in Bryans case, are armed for two singular reasons, one of defending the U.S. from forigen invasion ans secondly, of overthrowing a tyrannical government. Not hunting, not home protection, except in the broadest sense...
The second ammendment was created by the founders as a mechanisim to overthrow the U.S. government.
Liberals don't like it when the discussion goes this way.. Nontheless.. Facts are stubborn things.
The point is clearly made again and again in the Federalist papers.
" ... but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights ..."
-- Alexander Hamilton speaking of standing armies in Federalist 29
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."
-- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356
"No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Proposal Virginia Constitution, 1 T. Jefferson Papers, 334,[C.J. Boyd, Ed., 1950]
"O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone ..."
-- Patrick Henry, Elliot p. 3:50-53, in Virginia Ratifying Convention demanding a guarantee of the right to bear arms
"[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
--James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46