And, uh, Smallpox and other biological agents used to infect blankets provided to the Indians, poisons [and bodies] used to intentionally polute waterholes, and noxious gasses used during sieges: writings of the Mohist sect in China dating from the 4th century BC, describe the use of bellows to pump smoke from burning balls of mustard and other toxic vegetables into tunnels being dug by a besieging army; older Chinese writings dating back to about 1000 BC contain hundreds of recipes for the production of poisonous or irritating smokes for use in war along with numerous accounts of their use. From these accounts we know of the arsenic-containing "soul-hunting fog", and the use of finely divided lime dispersed into the air to suppress a peasant revolt in AD 178.
The earliest recorded use of gas warfare in the West dates back to the 5th century BC, during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta when Spartan forces besieging an Athenian city placed a lighted mixture of wood, pitch, and sulfur under the walls hoping that the noxious smoke would incapacitate the Athenians, so that they would not be able to resist the assault that followed. Sparta wasn't alone in its use of unconventional tactics during these wars: Solon of Athens is said to have used hellebore roots to poison the water in an aqueduct leading from the Pleistrus River around 590 BC during the siege of Cirrha.
Chemical weapons were known and used in ancient and medieval China. Polish chronicler Jan Długosz mentions usage of posionous gas by Mongol army in 1241 in Battle of Legnica.
So, you figure that since such weapons of mass destruction weren't forbidden under the Constitution and being in uses far predating that document, you've got no problem with my fixing up a couple of thousand kilograms of Nitrogen Mustard? It's easy to do, and Thiodiglycol is easily available and inexpensive.
"So, you figure that since such weapons of mass destruction weren't forbidden under the Constitution and being in uses far predating that document, you've got no problem with my fixing up a couple of thousand kilograms of Nitrogen Mustard? It's easy to do, and Thiodiglycol is easily available and inexpensive."
No, I figure that "the right to keep and bear arms" always meant "the right to have guns", then and now, and never meant the right to have germ bombs and worse. The smallpox blankets were used by the army, but INDIVIDUALS with smallpox were forcibly quarantined.
I keep circling back to this critical point. The right to keep and bear arms is not unlimited. No right is, was or can be. Speech was never unlimited, and those limitations didn't infringe "freedom of speech", because "Freedom of Speech" is a term of art referring to the freedom of political and responsible public speech. There never was a freedom to speak fraud, and state and federal laws against Fraud do not violate the Constitution. Likewise, the right to keep and bear arms meant guns (and swords). It didn't mean the right to have the ability to infect everybody with smallpox. It didn't mean the right to have a private army. There never was any right to maintain private armies. It doesn't today mean the right to have mass casualty weapons.
The right is not infringed by stating that things that are not encompassed within the right are not in it.
This is the fault line where all discussion breaks down, I guess. You are just going to keep on asserting, I guess, that because some generals sent smallpox to the Indians that YOU have the uninfringable right to have an anthrax bomb in your basement if you want to. You do not. If you have one in your basement, you're a criminal. People who have guns want them for defense. Nobody has WMD for defense. They have them because they are terrorists with evil intent, by definition. The right to keep and bear arms does not mean the right to amass the tools of terrorism until the very moment that you use them. Tim McVeigh and company had the right to have guns. They had the right to have fertilizer. There is no right in the Second Amendment to take vast quantities of fertilizer, load it into a U-Haul, and make of it a rolling bomb. None. It was illegal to form the plan to do it, illegal to amass the material to do it. Illegal to make it. And, of course, illegal to use it. The treason was not simply detonating the bomb. It was having the first meeting where it was discussed how to get the materials to strike at the government, and making the first purchase of the first bag of fertilizer. You have the right to have fertilizer. You're a conspirator in treason, unprotected by the Second Amendment, if you and a buddy bought that fertilizer in order to make a bomb to go attack the government. You do not have the right to do that, nor to take the steps to do it.
This should be obvious. But amazingly, you think you DO have the right to have a fertilizer bomb so long as you don't use it. You won't back away from the proposition. You assert that the 2nd Amendment means that.
No, it doesn't.
Not now.
Not in 1789.
Not at any point in between.
When one takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, including the 2nd Amendment, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, one is taking an oath to root out and destroy anybody who is building WMD in his basement. They're terrorists, domestic enemies of the USA. Seeking weapons like that isn't PROTECTED by the Constitution, it's de facto treason, seeking to make war against the United States.