Is there any Founding-era historical legal precedent (Bruen) regulating or banning this type of arm that one carries on his person for offensive or defensive action?
Even if this document is intended to be a "living document," it should be changed through that amendment process, not executive edicts or regular statutes. Good luck.
> I don't hear people lamenting about the need for "Founding-era" precedent when it comes to suffrage rights
Perhaps because this was increasing liberty (rather than restricting it) and actually happened via Constitutional amendment?
I don't believe they did constrain themselves in that manner. As the quote below seems to indicate, they allowed their research to go beyond the "Founding era"
"First, we reviewed “[t]hree important founding-era legal scholars [who] interpreted the Second Amendment in published writings.” Ibid. Second, we looked to “19th-century cases that interpreted the Second Amendment...”"
>it should be changed through that amendment process
I think we agree here. Not saying you hold this position, but there does often seem to be a bias for favored causes, though. E.g., constrained to using the amendment process when it comes to limiting gun rights, but no such argument when it comes to edicts that limit voting rights. I would just like to see consistency in thought/principle (again, not claiming you take a biased view).
>Perhaps because this was adding additional liberty
So just to stress test this idea, you would be in favor of any additional liberty that went through the amendment process? E.g., would you think it beneficial to allow citizens rights to nuclear procurement as long as it went through an amendment process? Or reducing the voting age to 10 years old? I.e., do you tend to think more liberty is always better?
The Constitution does very little to regulate voting or define the election process: substantial responsibilities are placed upon the States and Congress to establish the parameters around the exercise of this specific right.
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." is highly explicit and unambiguous. (without delving into the legal shitshow that is "shall"..)
> So just to stress test this idea
This sounds dangerously like the setup to a strawman generalization: I was postulating specifically on suffrage and why people might not be presently "lamenting" a widely-accepted-as-positive increase to liberty.
> you would be in favor of any additional liberty that went through the amendment process?
Generally, yes! I trust our 50 state legislatures to make the right choices. All of these hypotheticals probably would never survive the process: whether I alone think it's "beneficial" isn't relevant.
This is applying a hindsight bias. Do you think it was widely-accepted-as-a-positive when first implemented? Similarly, I don’t know that we can pretend to know a-priori whether changes to the status quo on gun rights may be seen as a “widely” accepted positive or negative.
I think your personal opinion is relevant because it gives context. Forums aren’t the greatest when it comes to nuanced discussion, and understanding someones thought process helps to understand if they take an appropriately nuanced view. When it’s clear they do not, there’s not much interest in further discussion because they lose some credibility.
> Do you think it was widely-accepted-as-a-positive when first implemented?
No, but again we were talking about the present.
> we can pretend to know a-priori whether changes to the status quo on gun rights
We don't need to pretend, thankfully: we have mountains of historical data on arms regulation we can cite - many of these regulations currently exist or existed for some substantial amount of time (and possibly ran/run afoul of current liberty-preserving SCOTUS 2A interpretation.)
The typical argument is: "Well, if we just banned them all it would work! We didn't go far enough, that's why!"
If this were a widely accepted idea, we would have ratified an amendment repealing the Second already.
