A Very Strange Reading of the Second Amendment

The National Rifle Association and the gun lobby have perverted the public understanding of the Second Amendment.  If you were to listen to the NRA, you would think that the Constitution guarantees the right of anyone to own pretty much any gun they want, carry it anyway they want, and store it anywhere they want without the interference of government regulation.  The Second Amendment reads:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Leaving aside for a second that there is considerable evidence that the framers of the Constitution were talking exclusively about state Militias, a view held by the Supreme Court until 2008 when they ruled in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller; the NRA's interpretation of gun rights exceeds anything written in the text.

Maybe I missed this in civics and my one semester of constitutional law, but the Second Amendment doesn't say, "...keep and bear any arm..."  The term "arms" is vague.  Why should "arms" be limited to semi-automatic weapons with large capacity magazines?  Why should the Second Amendment not include grenade launchers and shoulder-fired missiles?  Why not an M1 Abrams tank or a nuclear weapon?  Are all of the aforementioned weapons not arms?

Some would argue that the above is ridiculous and I'd agree with them, but ridiculousness is a matter of prospective.  Many people in the developed world that think the ease at which we can get firearms in this country is ridiculous.

I see nothing in the Second Amendment that allows for the manufacture and distribution of weapons and ammunition.  What is explicitly in the Constitution is that the Federal Government has the authority to regulate interstate commerce, which would include the sales of most firearms.  The Federal Government could for example, prevent Colt from selling outside the state of Connecticut.

The Constitution does and always has left room for interpretation and legislation.  This is why the Constitution created the Supreme Court in the first place.  The First Amendment has limits as well.  We don't allow child pornography for example and that is a kind of free expression.  The First Amendment doesn't allow for slander or threats even though those are kinds of free expression.  Let's say there was a segment of the population that believed that their free exercise of religion included not allowing women to read, would the First Amendment allow for that?  No, it wouldn't.

You can make a case for private gun ownership, but don't use a flimsy reading of the Constitution to justify it.