To be fair I guess some confusion might arise when one would claim "If you teleported Jefferson to now, gave him some time to adapt, he might hold a different view." Perhaps this is what you had in mind, bigpoison? It seems to overcomplicate things somewhat, so it never occurred to me to "interpret" old statements in such a way, but perhaps we were talking past each other. I was simply debating over whether or not he claimed that defense with guns is fine, not why he claimed it or whether he would still claim it in a different circumstance.
Again... when we start calling these hypothetical scenarios as part of an "interpretation" it gets really really speculative, not unlike questions of whether Lasker could travel to this time and beat the modern masters. At that point you might as well call it changing the law rather than calling it "reunderstanding the constitution," which I consider disingenuous. Like I said, one can make a fair point that being constitutional is not guaranteed to be desirable; I think some counter points could be made too, but it's a fair point.
I was expecting a "Wow! I never thought of it that way."
Silly me.
Well, anyway, I reckon if you kept slaves, you too, would arm yourself.
But I did think of it that way, lol. It's not really a revelation. I am still wondering if you know what it means to distinguish between debating over what someone said and whether or not they are right?
My final opinion on the matter is going to depend on analyzing lots of different points and counter points and trying to see what wins out, which I'm not yet sure about. My entire opinion is certainly not going to rely on merely what one or two people said. But, babytiger brought up this "interpretation" stuff, so I, and some others, responded.