[bvw]

The AMERICAN "historical tradition" of Privateering:

• 200+ years out of Rhode Island
• Patriot Pirates: The Privateer War for Freedom and Fortune in the American Revolution
• Jewish Colonial Privateers A source for typical number of cannon: Havannah 6, Marbois 16.

So what does actual HISTORY say? Well, since a Man-of-war was the greatest weapon available at the time -- the weapon of mass destruction of its time -- therefore the US Constitution and 2nd both mean we have the right to surface to air missiles. Even nukes! That's the ORIGINALIST reading.

Of course some like to peek through history's looking glass only through a dim slender hairs-width of a slit. The whole picture is very scary. So we redefine words, change meanings -- make the Constitution "alive" like some Frankenstein's monster, rather than have it be the fearsome contract for Liberty that it was to have been.

[bvw]

Re the phrase "to bear arms", Justice Scalia's own opinion includes the parenthetic comment:

That is how, for example, our Declaration of Independence used the phrase: “He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country . . . ."

Meaning ... the captives pressed into Royal Navy service operated Men of War -- battleships and the biggest cannon, grenades, mortars, torpedoes, rockets and missiles, etc. Thus "to bear Arms" includes the ownership and operation of the biggest of weapons.

Surface to air missiles, and so on.

Not just stuff a soldier can carry in his arms, or on his body.

Thanks, Mr. Scalia!