There are a good many people here who speak of constitutional carry. Yet there are very few who know what the Constitutionalists spoke of when they considered the carrying of arms.
You bring up a darn good point. I emphasized what I did of your posting for the following:
I get the impression that the average U.S. citizen somehow thinks that one day, on or about July 4, 1776, the U.S. Constitution miraculously appeared in its entirety amidst much drinking and fanfare and all was good afterwards.
The reality of it is that the Founding Fathers didn't even START working on this until the Constitutional Convention was convened on May 25, 1787...almost ELEVEN YEARS after we declared our independence.
Until that time the country operated under the Articles of Confederation, from 1777. Well, before that there was the Continental Congress, which actually predates our declaration of independence.
It wasn't until May of 1790 when the U.S. Constitution was finally ratified by all 13 states. THREE YEARS after the start of the Constitutional Convention.
So it took 14 years from our declaration of independence to get to the point of the Constitution as we know it.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the first ten amendments, collectively known as the Bill of Rights, was already in the works. The final ratification of which occured December 15, 1791. A year and a half after the U.S. Constitution was ratified by all 13 states.
So, from our declaration of independence on July 4, 1776, it took us almost SIXTEEN YEARS to get to the point of ratifying the Bill of Rights in its entirety. This includes the Second Amendment.
So there were YEARS of debate, work, re-work and more debate, plus the job of running the fledgling country in the meantime, that went into this whole process.
And it's quite evident by anybody who takes the time to do even the most basic research into this era of our history that much of the debates were very heated, indeed.
The Founding Fathers were not, by any stretch of the imagination, of one mind and one body during this process and the spectrum of political and philosophical beliefs covered the full scale of ideology at that time.
I, too, wish more of us would actually take the time to read up and actually learn more about the events that took place in those first 16 years.
As an example of common ignorance, how many people know there were 7 presidents of Congress followed by 8 presidents of the United States under the Articles of Confederation before George Washington was elected in 1789? Well, only 5 presidents of Congress served from the time of our declaration of independence, so you could technically say that 2 were never presidents of the United States because of that.
And we even had one president for a day in 1849, as well (David Rice Atchison). It was unofficial and he never took the oath, but he WAS the president for one day on March 4, 1849. Look it up.
So, we had 13 presidents of our country BEFORE George Washington (not counting the two who served before July 4, 1776)...which brings our total from 44 (starting with George) to 57. 59, if you include Atchison.
http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0312172/early.html
For a country with such a relatively short and uncomplicated history when compared to many of the countries in Europe, we're sadly undereducated in comparison.
And as a whole, we're woefully naive on the workings of our Founding Fathers in their struggle to get us where they did by 1791.
With respect to the Second Amendment, the Federalist Papers are a start. But don't stop there in your historical research.