If a gun nut starts quoting The Founders, always look up the context

[Ohioboy]

People who interpret the 2nd Amendment as a license for armed insurrection like to cherry- pick quotes they think will somehow prove The Founders were in favor of everyone being constantly armed against their own government. They like to fantasize that the Founders often waxed poetically about guns, and how important they are to freedom.

One such quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson goes: "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms".

This quote sounds very philosophical, as though Jefferson is equating freedom with the right to bear arms. That is until you realize the context is that of Jefferson's 1st draft proposal to the State Of Virginia's Constitution. In its actual context, this quote is literally saying gun rights for free men, and no gun rights for non-free men.

Ironically this particular Jefferson quote supports gun control for certain people: gun control for slaves (who will most likely be black), but no gun control for “free men” (who will most likely be white).

Let your gun nut friends know Jefferson supported gun control.

[usonian]

1. The context is flintlock pistols and single-shot rifles.

Modern automatic weapons have far greater killing capacity than anything the founders ever saw or imagined.
They are truly weapons of mass destruction. And we can and should rightly exclude them.

Would they have done so?
We don't know, because "intent" is unclear and is exploited by deniers of change.

BUT ONE INTENT IS CLEAR AND PUT IN WRITING.

The constitution is meant to be amended to adjust to the times, in order to protect life, and "domestic tranquility" per the Preamble:

It also mentions posterity, not the mass murder of the next generation.