On the Supreme Court interpreting the 2nd Amendment

Justice Scalia calls himself an originalist. How is it "originalist" to delete the first half of the Second Amendment?

Moreover, a true originalist would abide by the meaning that the words of the Constitution had when they were written.

Well, in 1800 or thereabouts guess what "arms" meant?

Flintlocks. Flintlocks that took one or two minutes to load after each shot, and that required yard-long barrels to have any accuracy. The Second Amendment guarantees the rights of state militia members to own flintlocks. That's what the Founders meant. They'd be aghast at seeing the horrors that one man with an M-16, a duffel bag full of ammo clips, and a scope sight could do.

All this has nothing to do with whether I think people should have the right to own a gun. I qualified as an expert on the M1 (which dates me, I realize) in the Army, and enjoyed firing and even maintaining my rifle.

Rather this has to do with whether the Supreme Court's conservative majority is actually conservative.

It's not. Not by a long shot. So to speak.

Actual conservatives wouldn't edit the Constitution to their liking. They wouldn't overturn a century of consistent appellate court opinions without blinking. And they wouldn't re-define the Constitution as if its authors spoke modern English with modern meanings.

If people want to own guns for private use, fine. Amend the Constitution to say so. But to simply repurpose it to fit one's predilections is the very essence of judicial activism, which all five of those justices claim to abhor.