That, too, is a revisionist take. Sure, earlier commentary concentrated on advantages of the militia, especially verses a standing army. But there is only limited discussion of the scope of the right prior to the 20th century. It was only with the development of federal regulation of guns with the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968 that the question of whether or not the militia clause limited the right began to be discussed.
There was less discussion about the second amendment itself because it was so linked to the militias in common understanding. Early American cities and states had laws restricting storage, banning concealed carry, requiring registration and/or taxation, etc. One really important thing to keep in mind is the distinction between what a rich, white property owner could do (i.e. not only own guns but be expected to furnish supplies for the militia in which they were likely an officer) and what, say, a poor or black person was allowed to do even though they were ostensibly equal under the law.
I'm not saying there wasn't plenty of allowed activities but that the concept of this being an unrestricted right goes back to roughly the second half of the previous century.
>the concept of this being an unrestricted right goes back to roughly the second half of the previous century.
From a federal perspective this is laughably disingenuous. The strongest federal gun control is the GCA and NFA. In 1920 you could mail order a machine gun.
The bill of rights weren't even fully incorporated to apply to the states until later in the republic, such as when the 14th amendment was passed. So it's disingenuous to characterize 19th century restrictions as representations of statutes in compliance the 2nd, when the 2nd didn't even necessarily apply to local/state governments at that time.
Again, the point is that for the first couple centuries it was not considered controversial that there could be restrictions. People might disagree on the exact details but few people thought there couldn’t be any restrictions prior to that becoming a major political rallying point in the late 1970s.
