Second Amendment rocket launchers?

Justice Antonin Scalia was talking gun rights on Fox
News – specifically whether the Constitution permits
regulating how much firepower one individual could have.

The cinema shooter in Aurora, as we know, had four
weapons and thousands of rounds, all of it legal. So here
comes Justice Scalia, who is an Originalist.

“When you consult the text, you give it the meaning it
had when it was adopted,” said Scalia.

And Chris Wallace asks him, ‘OK so what about a rocket
launcher.’

“The amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be
hand carried. It’s to keep and bear, so it doesn’t apply
to canons, but I suppose there are hand-held rocket
launchers that can bring down airplanes,” said Scalia.

Apparently it’s still an undecided issue, but you must
apply the conditions at the time the Constitution was
adopted.

“They had some limitations on the nature of arms that
could be borne,” said Scalia.

Well, I checked. Every hand-held weapon in the 18th
century was a single shot musket or pistol except for the
British Nock Gun, which could fire only seven rounds. So
it sounds like most modern guns aren’t protected! And not
only that, he says back in the day, there were laws
against carrying any weapon that was unreasonably scary.

“If you carried around a really horrible weapon just to
scare people, like a head ax or something, that was, I
believe, a misdemeanor,” said Scalia.

And this is Scalia speaking! I don’t care how
conservative he thinks he is, if the NRA gets wind of
this, he is toast.