Very huge. It buttresses "the right of the people" in a way the left can't misconstrue.
To think an ammendment so simply worded could be misinterpreted by so many suggests we have a problem. Still, we're headed in the right direction and in a generation or two, we may be able to shoot back in life threatening situations outside our homes. Historians will look back and wonder why we didn't exercise our right sooner. And they'd be right: Why?
The problem is purposeful misinterpretation, as in "that view is inconvenient to the idea of the Vanguard of the Proletariat leading the masses to a Socialist utopia."
Still, we're headed in the right direction and in a generation or two, we may be able to shoot back in life threatening situations outside our homes.
Sooner than that - many states have adopted the "Castle Doctrine" and even expanded it to other places that are similar to a home, like your car. Come to Texas, and if someone is legitimately threatening you then you can safely (from a legal perspective) end the threat on a permanent basis anywhere except in a very few places (where, even here, we aren't "allowed" to carry).
Historians will look back and wonder why we didn't exercise our right sooner.
Fear. That and really crappy judges and a bunch of authoritarian, paternalistic officials who weren't stopped by the populace (i.e. it all goes back to fear, or Kim DuToit's "Pussification of the Western Male").