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So, you're basically asking why we don't limit the Second Amendment only to the weapons technology that was widely adopted as of the late 18th Century when the 2A was written?Sure. Sounds like a fine idea. In fact, let’s do it to all the rights enumerated in the first 10 Amendments:Freedom of speech or the press only applies to actual speaking or to print media, not to any form of amplified public address, broadcast or digital media as these technologies didn’t exist until at least the 1830s with the telegraph. The U.S. Government will have the power to criminalize any content spoken into an amplification system, broadcast over the airwaves or through wired networks, or posted online, for any reason, including that it’s disparaging to the US or to any political figure thereof.Troops can be quartered by order of the government in timeshares, corporate-owned residential properties, any property subject to an ownership contract such as an HOA, and on any other property subject to an ownership or tenancy arrangement other than a simple rent/lease arrangement or outright individual ownership, as these more complex contractual arrangements were not in practice as of ratification.Searches and seizures of anything belonging to you that is of a type that didn’t exist in 1791 cannot, by definition, be unlawful. Without any warrant, police can search your phone, your computer, and any other digital device, as well as any form of transportation that doesn’t run on hay and oats, and any building requiring technology for its basic structure that did not exist in 1791, including high-rise towers, tension-slab foundations etc.Videotaped interrogations in which you are compelled under threat of pain or injury to confess to a crime are admissible, as is any other compulsion to give information in a form that didn’t exist in colonial North America, including being forced at the point of a semi-automatic weapon to type your confession into a computer and use a thumbprint scanner to authenticate it.The electric chair, gas chamber and lethal injection cannot, by definition, be cruel and unusual punishment regardless of how they’re administered, because they didn’t exist until after 1791. For that matter, we can get an execution over with very quickly by just repurposing a steam catapult from an aircraft carrier to fling people at high speed into a solid wall (credit to George Carlin for that one).No other action, power or freedom of the States and the People can be recognized and protected as a right unless it was asserted as being such in legal writings prior to 1791. As such, all unenumerated putative rights currently being debated as to their existence and extent, including asserted rights to abortion, gay marriage, and healthcare, definitely do not exist.Sound like a country you want to live in? No? Me neither. The Constitution and its Amendments should be interpreted based on the meaning of the words used as of when they were written, but they are applicable within the scope of that meaning to any more modern development of technology, economics or social science that falls within their scope.You are likely very wary of anyone who says you have no right of free speech, privacy or protections from government search or seizure in the digital realm, and for good reason. This kind of argument about the Second Amendment is no different; the right still exists even as technology improves the devices under scope of protection. You cannot assert that one Amendment is somehow inherently limited in its application because it’s a right you don’t like and don’t care about, if you’re not willing to have that same argument be readily applicable to the rights you do like.I will leave you with this erudite passage from a scholar far more learned than I:Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment . We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997) , and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35–36 (2001) , the Second Amendment extends, prima facie,to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.~ Antonin Scalia, Opinion of the Court, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER (No. 07-290), 478 F. 3d 370

There was also no radio, television, internet, or true mass printing. Why should those be covered by the constitution? Why can’t the government censor any speech beyond mere voice and hand pressed newspaper? Moreover, there were only a few denominations of Christianity present within the United States at the time; why can’t the others, as well as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism be suppressed now?This was addressed already, in Heller:“Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment . We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997) , and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35–36 (2001) , the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”Moreover, in re the comments of - and the shutting off of comments by - that world class intellectual coward and constitutional law non-scholar, Robert Gallagher, here are two highly respected con law professors on the subject:William Van Alstyne, The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Arms, 43 Duke L.J. 1255 (1994).Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637 (1989).And here, for your further education: Author Tom Kratman

About this payment in particular, we know only that it was sent, apparently via the military road from the Roman fortress-city of Dara to the Persian fortress-city of Nisibis (Procopius, History of the Wars 1.22). We can, however, speculate productively.The gold was likely sent in the form of coins. The gold coin of the late Roman Empire was the solidus (literally "solid bit [o' gold]"), called the nomisma in Greek. Since the solidus was struck at a weight of 72 to a pound, it would have taken a whopping 792,000 solidi to pay the Persians. Justinian and company, fortunately, had quite a few solidi laying around. Since the third-century demise of the silver denarius, gold had been the basis of the Roman currency; and solidi were minted in large numbers to pay the troops - and to be returned to the state via taxation. There were, in short, solidi aplenty in circulation. And in 533, before the expensive campaigns in North Africa and Italy and the ruinous impact of the plague, there were still solidi aplenty in the treasury. Justinian's predecessor had left him a surplus of almost 30,000,000 solidi; and though the Persian War had doubtless dented that, there was almost certainly enough in the imperial coffers to pay the Persians in gold coin.Would the Persians have preferred a bullion payment? Possibly; their own coinage was primarily silver, and the fact that they requested the gold by weight may suggest that they expected to receive it in bulk. We know that some other payments to foreign peoples were made in solidi - later in the sixth century, the Avars would be paid anywhere from 100,000 to 800,000 annually - and this may suggest that coins were standard. A treaty later in Justinian's reign specifically mentions paying the Persians in gold coins. So let's go with the assumption that the Persians were paid in solidi.How, then, were those 800,000 - odd coins conveyed? And from where? We don’t know, of course. It is possible that the coins were sent from Antioch, about 300 miles from Amida; it is equally possible that they came from Constantinople, 900 miles away by land. If we assume that they came from Constantinople, they may have traveled by sea to Antioch, and then overland from there. This, however, would not have been as much of a time-saver as you might expect, since the prevailing winds were not favorable. And of course, there was the risk of shipwreck. So let’s assume that the money traveled overland.To transport the coins, the Byzantines would have used the heavy wagons of the imperial transport service (cursus publicus), which could carry up to 1,000 pounds each (the upper limit stipulated by law). We might imagine eleven or twelve wagons, each containing a chest of coins and surrounded by an escort of mounted imperial guardsmen. Since the heavy wagons of the transport service only managed about 25 miles a day, even on the excellent highways of Anatolia, it would have taken about 12 days to send the money from Antioch, and nearly 40 to dispatch it from Constantinople. Once the gold finally reached Amida, another day, under even heavier escort, would have brought it to Nisibis, and the Persians.