The fundamental issue in gun rights and measures to address gun violence is accountability to public authority.
Accountability means specifically registration of ownership.
Registration is the only mechanism by which gun ownership can be effectively regulated and gun use regulations can be enforced. Accountability to public authority it turns out is the one point of policy the gun lobby's armed populace fantasy cannot accommodate. It has to cultivate a constituency that is already eager to believe and rally the constituency to defeat legislation. The quotes are usually fragments lifted out of the context of the immediate sentences and paragraphs in which they were written and completely out of the context of time in which they were written. If the NRA wants to have its very contemporary armed populace fantasy, it can have it, formulate it, believe in it, and lobby for it, but it has no roots in the Second Amendment and the historical consciousness and practices of the militia.