Actually, the text reads as if the founders intended the people not only to own guns, but also to organize themselves into militias as well. Which would imply they could own not only hunting rifles, but cannon and mortars as well.
Your liberal and obtuse reading is astoundingly unpersuasive. The first three words of the Second, "A well-regulated militia," set the scope of the amendment. Quite obviously, since militias have nothing whatsoever to do with hunting, the Second could never have anything to do with hunting, so your implication is wrong on its face.
We know what the Second meant to the Framers of the Constitution, we absolutely know for certain and beyond all doubt, because we have documentary evidence in the form of kept minutes of the Constitutional Congresses by none other than James Madison:
"To establish an uniformity of exercise and arms for the "militia and rules for their government when called into "service under the authority of the United States: and to "establish and regulate a militia in any State where it's [sic] Legislature shall neglect to do it." It was moved and seconded to refer the last two motions to a Committee which passed in the affirmative."
Source: The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, pg.323 (326)
The Framers were not ever debating about crime or hunting; these ideas never remotely entered into the discussion. Are you kidding me? The Framers did not intend for an armed citizenry, period, and the only reason you and most gun owners are confused is due to blatant lies spread by the NRA and Justice Scalia going out of his way and way beyond the scope of the case to invent unsupportable bullshit in his opinion in DC v. Heller (2008).
This article sums up the historical academic consensus on the intentions of The Framers with the Second, and ELI5's it for you. So suck it up, stop lying to yourself, and decide whether you accept what The Framers of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights actually intended, or, conversely, that you are a deviant that refuses to accept the social contract. It is either/or. Either you are a self-less patriot... or a some kind of damn obsessively entitled self-serving cowardly fearful criminal renegade pirate. Either way, now you can stop being a fool and deceiving yourself into believing whatever the fuck you want. We know what the Second means. We know. It's concern is protection against tyranny, not hunting, not crime, and not self-defense. Tyranny. And what you believed previously to reading this comment and confirming the references is provably patently false, not the least reason for which is that I just proved it false.
But the greater point is that what we consider free speech could become practically illegal if the first amendment was interpreted like the second.
No, that is not the greater point. It is an absurd notion.
That the courts have found that "shall not be infringed" can mean, "make it practically impossible to exercise a constitutional right" should concern you.
You are repeating dogshit, the conspiracy rhetoric of the radical Right that is entirely unsupportable. The only conservatives that operate in their own interests are the wealthiest conservatives, the one-percenters. You and 99.9% of all the others that do not have $1M and do not earn more than $350K/yr are being bamboozled and distracted by irrelevant issues, such as Second Amendment paranoia and abortion, and defrauded into voting against your personal economic interests in order to keep the richest the richest. You are shooting yourself in your own foot. All that matters with your vote is economic considerations. And it comes down to one simple choice: Do you want to keep the wealthiest the wealthiest at your own personal expense, sacrificing your own economic opportunity to do so? Or do you want to personally economically advance? That is all. That is what you should be deciding when you vote, not whether you think the Second is going to be repealed, because I have a clue for you, it will never be repealed. If there ever is another Constitutional Amendment that passes it will be one that severely limits government authority to do or say anything about a woman's vagina, and if you are a man, you should not care unless you are a misogynist. The Second is set in stone, but it will take another twenty years at least until the Supreme Court is balanced before it will be sorted out. But it will be, I promise you, because idiotic self-deceiving Conservatives have been shrinking in numbers for a long time, and for more than twenty years have held on by their toenails in being vastly over-represented in Congress at the expense of everyone else. There is power in numbers, and the Conservatives are vastly outnumbered now, and will continue to shrink as more of them get a Goddamn clue and wake up to the fact that all that the Republicans care about is dismantling government to ensure the richest keep nearly all of the available wealth. A reckoning is coming. It is already in progress. The political pendulum is about to cease swinging, and this is a good thing, and nearly all, including yourself, will benefit, whether you like it or not. The seven hundred or so billionaires in our country probably won't be happy about it. Fuck 'em.
You may not agree with the existence of the second amendment, but there are ways of changing the constitution. What is more dangerous is that a constitutional right can be declare effectively void by judicial fiat. You can probably provide me with examples.
You could not be more wrong. The Second is just fine as it is. The only example I can recall of the Court vandalizing the Constitution is DC v. Heller, changing the literal and historical meaning of the Second concerning a selfless right to stand against tyranny to a stupid and selfish right to murder in order to protect your material wealth, with Justice Scalia massively overstepping the authority and purview of the Supreme Court. It will be corrected when we get some more honest, reliable, and competent Justices on the Court. And Article V of the Constitution provides precisely two and only two ways of changing the Constitution: Amendments may be proposed either by the Congress, through a joint resolution passed by a two-thirds vote, or by a convention called by Congress in response to applications from two-thirds of the state legislatures. Always two there are, no more, no less.