"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.
That is not the oath I took. The oath I took and renew every six years reads as follows:
"I, [name & SSAN], having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of Major do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." DA Form 71, 1 August 1959
Oh, don't get your panties in such a knot about homemade *fertilizer bombs.* I could do a lot better than that if necessary.