I'm no fan of the quasi-religious attitude that many Americans have toward guns (I think of them as weapons first and foremost, duh), but I think those who wish to alter the Second Amendment might need to find a better argument than arguing that this amendment was originally crafted with the protection of slave patrols in mind. I feel little need to copy/paste at length all of the arguments for this (they are mostly derived from a single person who looked at one of the draft amendments dealing with militias and the change in wording from "country" to "state" and how that likely had something to do with the protection of armed slave patrols, due to questions regarding Article IV and the guaranteeing of protecting the (slave) states in case of internal insurrection). What struck me in the linked article was the use of anachronistic language (like "police state") to describe these patrols. It may be me, but it's kinda coming close to an attempt to tie in gun ownership supporters (the reasonable ones in addition to the zealots) to supporting a "police state" to the eventual (presumed) mother of all "police states."

It's a ridiculous line of argument. First, since it establishes a tenuous "intention" to the finished document (there is similar language to the adopted amendment in late 18th century state constitutions from such hotbeds of slave revolt like New York and Rhode Island), one either has to laugh at this rationale (just as one might find amusing the claims that the Constitution is a Judeo-Christian document) or swallow it whole and abandon any pretense to deductive or inductive reasoning. Secondly, it's so inflammatory that anyone other than those who want to adopt a fringe position could consider it as being worthy of anything other than preventing any sort of compromise on the issue of assault weapons ban.

But yes, these type of arguments serve to show that in a great many contentious cases, no single side has a monopoly on inflammatory stupid rhetoric.