I couldn’t agree more. You find somebody who is an originalist on the issue of the Second Amendment, and you will find somebody who is an originalist on every other issue out there.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that there’s another clause, this time in the body of the Constitution, which completely backs up a very expansive view of the Second Amendment. This is the clause in Article 1, Section 8 that speaks of the power of Congress to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal. Most people have never heard of this, but what it is essentially means is that Congress can issue authorization for private individuals to undertake hostile actions against any enemy. This originated during the Revolutionary War itself, during which the Continental Congress issued such Letters. Private individuals, very wealthy ones to be sure, got these Letters and attacked British commercial and naval ships. Now, how do you attack the British Navy, then the strongest force on the Waters of this planet? Certainly not with muskets. They had cannons, lots of them. Privately owned cannons. I would like to know how it is that someone opposed to an expansive view of the Second Amendment can possibly square that reality with their viewpoint. It should be noted that the 2nd Amendment speaks of “arms,” not firearms, not muskets, but arms. Arms refer to every single weapon able to be utilized as part of the militia (and there was no equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction, so this does not include poison gas or nuclear weapons). The Founders were also quite well aware of technological progress, and the Second Amendment is as capable of being brought into the 21st century as are the First Amendment’s protections of freedom of the press. Anyone making the argument that only Revolutionary War-era muskets are protected, has just written out of the First Amendment radio, television and the internet, at a minimum. It is a fallacious argument.
Get us a Justice who understands this, and we will be just fine on every single issue out there.
I completely agree with you and have made that same argument to liberals about the Letters of Marque and Reprisal before. It’s also just a bit problematic for the antis that the same section authorizes Congress to organize and arm the militia, which kind of pours a bucket of cold water on their spurious interpretation of the ‘militia clause’ of 2A, which clearly and obviously doesn’t mean what they think it does, both on its own, and in context of the rest of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.