A recent article relevant to this thread. Excerpts below with complete article at the link. First and Second Amendment analogies can prove interesting...if you listen to some Statist's interpretation of the the Second Amendment and apply it to the First Amendment...the NYT should still be using that little number designed by Gutenberg.
Does the Second Amendment Protect Firearms Commerce?
Defending the right to sell and trade arms
Commentary by David B. Kopel
APR 11, 2014
127 Harv. L. Rev. F. 230
The First Amendment protects both book buyers and booksellers. Does the Second Amendment protect only people who buy guns, or does it also protect people who sell guns? Though this question has divided the federal courts, the answer is quite clear: operating a business that provides Second Amendment services is protected by the Second Amendment. District of Columbia v. Heller1 teaches that regulation of how firearms are commercially sold enjoys a presumption of constitutionality, which does not extend to prohibitions of firearms sales.
In terms of the original meaning of the Second Amendment, the right to engage in firearms commerce is clear. It is one of the most important reasons why America’s political dispute with Great Britain turned into an armed revolution.
In the fall of 1774, King George III embargoed all imports of firearms and ammunition into the thirteen colonies.38 The Americans treated the embargo on firearms commerce as evidence of plain intent to enslave America, and the Americans redoubled their efforts to engage in firearms commerce. For example, the Patriots in South Carolina were led by the “General Committee,” which declared: “[B]y the late prohibition of exporting arms and ammunition from England, it too clearly appears a design of disarming the people of America, in order the more speedily to dragoon and enslave them.”39 Writes one early-nineteenth-century historian, “[I]t was therefore recommended, to all persons, to provide themselves immediately, with at least twelve and a half rounds of powder, with a proportionate quantity of bullets.”40
The British and the Americans agreed that the reimposition of London’s rule in the United States required the prohibition of the firearms business. In 1777, with British victory seemingly within grasp, Colonial Undersecretary William Knox drafted a plan entitledWhat Is Fit to Be Done with America? To prevent any future rebellions, Knox planned that the Church of England be established as the official religion throughout America; that Parliament have power to tax America domestically (although there were no Americans in Parliament); and that a hereditary aristocracy be created in America. Another part of the plan was that “the Arms of all the People should be taken away . . . nor should any Foundery or manufactuary of Arms, Gunpowder, or Warlike Stores, be ever suffered in America, nor should any Gunpowder, Lead, Arms or Ordnance be imported into it without Licence.”41
The opposite of What Is Fit to Be Done with America? is the Constitution of the United States of America. No national religion.42 The tax power solely in the hands of a representative Congress.43 No titles of nobility.44 And a guarantee of the right to buy, sell, and manufacture arms.45
http://harvardlawreview.org/2014/04/...arms-commerce/