What “arms” looked like when the 2nd Amendment was written

[Zorro]

One of the guns used in the deadly mass shooting in Orlando, a military-style AR-15 rifle, has lately become the weapon of choice for gunmen intent on harming the maximum number of people in a minimum amount of time.

Gun-rights advocates have fiercely resisted any calls for tighter regulation of these weapons in response to mass shootings. The NRA estimates there are around 5 million AR-15 rifles in circulation, with hundreds of thousands more manufactured each year. They point out that the vast majority of the weapons are never used to commit a crime.

The heated discussions over gun control and gun rights that inevitably follow mass shootings like the one in Orlando typically revolve around interpretations of the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment. In full, the amendment reads, rather murkily, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." The wording leaves plenty of room for legal and political wrangling over the meaning of words like "well regulated," "militia," "right," "people," "keep," "bear" and "arms."

The National Rifle Association has explicitly embraced a message of Second Amendment "absolutism" in recent years. "Absolutes do exist," NRA President Wayne LaPierre said after the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. "We are as ‘absolutist’ as the Founding Fathers and framers of the Constitution. And we’re proud of it!"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/13/the-men-who-wrote-the-2nd-amendment-would-never-recognize-an-ar-15/