It's not my hogwash. It's just about every respectable Judge going back 200 years. It was a unanimous court with John Marshall and Joseph Story that said the 1st 8 amendments(including #2) only apply to the federal govt, as did countless other legal treatises and writers, including James Madison. But maybe Madison and Marshall and Story were all liberal activists.
So to say the 2nd amendment only apoplies to the federal govt is standard legal practice. No one really disputes it. The question is whether the 14th amendment's "privileges or immunities" clause incorporated it against state action. That argument has been going on for 150 years and there's plausible arguments on both sides. No one's really been able to prevail one way or the other. I tend to think that the evidence does support that it was intended and understood to bind the states. But even with that, most 2nd amendment scholars will concede that it does not preclude certain regulations(see Barnett, Halbrook, Kopel, Lott etc...). It's not some blanket guarantee, at least against the states.
As for the other amendments, yes even freedom of speech and religion is not some absolute guarantee, either. You can't smoke crack in the name of religion and hope that the Constitution covers you. You can take the Hugo Black "no law" absolutist view, but even Black didn't think that Freedom of Speech covered flag burning, for example, or guaranteed students the right to protest the Vietnam War(see Tinker v Des Moines) or gave a guy the right to burn his draft card or wear obscenity on his jacket in a courthouse(see Cohen v Caifornia). It's not wow, it's only what the Constitution says and how its been interpreted going back 200 years by just about everyone that's ever served on the Supreme Court.
There are plenty of similar cases in the religion area(see US v Reynolds to Employment v Smith)for more than 100 years that establish that regulations are not forbidden.
Regulations are different from Restrictions. It's one thing to say, you can't do something entirely vs saying you can do it under certain conditions.
I don't think there's 1 Justice on the SC today who would approve of an unfettered 2nd amendment that says you can have whatever "arms" you want and there's nothing any govt can do about it. Even the pro gun 5th circuit case stated that there's a huge difference between outright forbidding someone's use of arms and regulating it under certain circumstnces.
"That argument has been going on for 150 years and there's plausible arguments on both sides." From your post.
We will not decide the fate of the Second vs. the Fourteenth this evening. But here is an interesting piece:
"The Supreme Court has since abandoned the position that the Bill of Rights does not apply to the states. The Supreme Court in 1992 stated, "Thus all fundamental rights comprised within the term liberty are protected by the Federal Constitution from invasion by the States." "The most familiar of the substantive liberties protected by the Fourteenth Amendment are those recognized by the Bill of Rights." "... rights already guaranteed to the individual against federal interference by the express provisions of the first eight amendments to the Constitution."
Rudy is a Liberal, I do not support Liberals, He could never qualify my vote in a million years.
Rudy Giuliani announces lawsuit against gun companies
In his own words... Right here!