Mother Jones has the article The Second Amendment Doesn’t Say What You Think It Does.  The article is an interview with Michael Waldman the author if the book The Second Amendment: A Biography.  I liked the following example in discussing the legal “scholarship” that went into the Heller decision at the Supreme Court.

MW: They certainly supported a lot of it. The way it works in constitutional law is that legal scholarship plays a pretty big role. So there became a rather deafening roar of the pro-individual gun ownership model: They were publishing and reinforcing each other. Some of it was very useful, and I cite it in the book. And some of it, when you look at some of the claims, they are easily punctured. It reminded me of the people who write movie posters, in terms of pulling quotes out of context. Like this Thomas Jefferson quote—”One loves to possess arms.” It is in serious law review articles. It’s presented as proof of what the founders really meant. But what happened was Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to George Washington, saying, “Remember I sent you a bunch of those letters from when I was Secretary of State? Could you send them back to me? I think I’m going to get attacked for this position I made. I want to be able to defend myself: ‘One loves to possess arms,’ even though one hopes not to use them.” It’s a metaphor! But it’s in these law review articles. It’s funny! When you go to the NRA website, it’s still there. You can buy a T-shirt that has the quote!

I couldn’t find the T-Shirt mentioned in the article, but I did find this “scholarship”, CLEARING THE  SMOKE FROM THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT by ANTHONY J. DENNIS Copyright © 1995 Akron Law Review

Thanks to Summer Starbuck for posting this on Facebook.