In the fifteen years since the Heller decision came down, many gun control supporters have decided to quit arguing that the Second Amendment doesn't protect an individual right to keep and bear arms. Instead, they've fallen back to the position that, even if there is a right to keep and carry a gun included in the Constitution, it can be subjected to so many "reasonable" regulations that it can be eviscerated beyond recognition without ever crossing the line into infringement.  

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), is one of those gun-control flat earthers still clinging to the idea that the Supreme Court got it wrong in Heller, In his view, we've never possessed the right to keep and bear arms, at least not outside of service in a well-regulated militia. 

Raskin said people who liken Jan. 6 to the American Revolution are wrong, he said, and have perverted the Second Amendment's wording about a "well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State."

"Today, a well-regulated militia is the National Guard," Raskin said. "But what's going on in our country, where we have 25 times the rate of gun violence of the countries in the European Union, is the product of this complete distortion of the meaning of our Constitution. We have to demolish the idea that we have the right to overthrow the government. You don't just show up with a mob."

 He cited Alexander Hamilton's warning in the Federalist Papers. "He said the main thing we have to worry about is demagogues," Raskin said. "Politicians who incite the mob to create violence against our institutions. They begin as demagogues and they end as tyrants. They come in on the fury of the mob, but then they just end up violating everybody's rights."

To his critics who accuse him of trying to repeal the Second Amendment, he said, "We don't need to repeal the Second Amendment. We just need to read the Second Amendment."

And if you do read the Second Amendment, you quickly run into the phrase, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." No matter how much Raskin pretends otherwise, that right has always been treated as a right of individuals. 

Consider the history of mass violence in the United States, which has existed since the very beginning of this country. From Shays' Rebellion to the labor violence in the late 1800s to the widespread riots in the 1960s, this country has had plenty of experience with mob violence. And yet, at no point in history (at least until the 1960s) was there ever an attempt or even a real argument made that the American people can and should be disarmed, or that doing so wouldn't violate their Second Amendment rights. 

Yes, we should read the Second Amendment. But Raskin should also read a history book. When pro-and-anti-slavery forces were clashing in the Kansas Territories, neither Congress nor the competing territorial legislatures tried to impose a ban on gun ownership. When the Ku Klux Klan was terrorizing the South in the aftermath of the Civil War, Republicans sought to ensure that freedmen could exercise their individual right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves and their communities. They didn't try to ban breech-loading rifles or declare the south a gigantic "gun-free zone". 

I don't think Raskin's trying to repeal the Second Amendment. That would require a massive campaign, and it would inevitably end in failure. No, Raskin's taking the easy route: denying that the Second Amendment offers any protection for individual gun owners whatsoever. Why bother trying to rewrite the Constitution when you can just pretend it doesn't mean what it says?