There are no conditions for firearms ownership mentioned in the Second Amendment so I don't understand why the phrase "nearly unrestricted" was used in this statement.
Because there is no such thing as an "unrestricted" right under the U.S. Constitution. If there were, then prisons would be unconstitutional.
The use of the word firearms is also incorrect. The all inclusive term ARMS is what the Second Amendment says. The Bush/Ashcroft position is that the RKBA is an individual one, subject to government infringements. Note my tag line.
"Project (un)Safe Neighborhoods" gun confiscations are way up under the Bush administration, so he's fair game for bashing as a gun grabber.
It's restricted in the same reasonable ways that other Bill of Rights rights are restricted. The First doesn't give you the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or barge into a public school (funded with federal and state money) classroom and drown out the teacher with your rant on your pet issue. Writings by the framers of the 2A made clear that they did not intend that insane people or habitual felons should have an unfettered right to keep and bear arms (of course, back then "felon" didn't mean someone who still had a firearm for which your registration/license had expired), and common sense holds that we should be able to take guns away from people who are actively threatening to use them to commit crimes.
Well, because felons shouldn't have them. But, other than that, no restrictions.
Because if they admitted that it IS unrestricted they would have to admit the entire NFA-34 is also unconstitutional!
The fence straddling "it is, except when it's not" disappoints me beyond description.
It's just to much like Klinton's "depends on the definition of "is".
The constitution is NOT a "living document", and may be the last legal document ever to be written in plain English.
It's time to fully restore our constitution, and arrest those who commit truly criminal acts, not those who merely posses inanimate objects some socialist disapproves of.
Nor does the Bill of Rights "grant" anything. Rights, by their very nature, cannot be granted.