Dec18
A Quick Bleg
on December 18, 2012 at 5:05 pmCan someone point me to links in the past few days with the idiotic nonsense that the Founders didn’t anticipate semi-auto weapons?
[Update a while later]
Folks, I’m not asking for arguments against it. I have a devastating piece to do that. I’m looking for links to historical and illogical ignorami who argue for it.
There’s no proof of the statement, there can’t be.
But, it’s the ONLY thing the boobs of the Left can cling to. They’ve given up on the old line about, “…do you think they would have allowed you to own a TANK!!??”
The easy and obvious answer would be, ” YES, they would have allowed you to own a tank, IF you could afford it”. They allowed private citizens to own cannons, the ‘tanks’ of the day, what’s changed in our rights of being a citizen? Simply put, the only stricture on owning any sized guns then was the cost.
Most of the grown men, and many teen boys had a rifle back then. The state of the art was the same for civilians, militia members, drill group members and armies. And it wasn’t the thought pattern to hold us to THAT weapon, the thought pattern was to allow us to do EXACTLY what they had JUST done.
To throw off an overbearing government.
It wasn’t about hunting. It wasn’t about home security, except for fighting off the ‘zombies’ of the day, ‘injuns’, it wasn’t about concealed carry or not carrying in places that served alcohol. It was about telling the GOVERNMENT that, with the PEOPLE stood the power.
In point of fact, in 1774, ALL weapons were ‘assault weapons’. Guns were originally for armies, and were so expensive the average person couldn’t afford them. As time went on, costs went down, citizens could afford firearms, and in 1774, ALL weapons were ‘assault weapons’. There weren’t target shooters for almost 100 years AFTER the Revolutionary War, so ‘plinking’ wasn’t even on the Founder’s radar much less in their ‘imagination’, so, in 1774, ALL weapons were ‘assault weapons’ and that’s WHAT they wanted us to have them.
So by saying the Founders never wanted “X, Y or Z” type firearm or tank or submarine in the hands of civilians, you’re spread some uneducated, foolish BUUUULLLL Squirt.
Do not use the phrase “assault weapons”. That description is meaningless. Assault rifles are a well defined concept but have nothing to do with any political conceptions of “assault weapons”. Assault rifles were designed as portable automatic weapons for medium ranged combat employing an intermediate round and a detachable magazine back in WWII. The earliest known example is the Kurz Rifle.
Also AFAIK in the US ordnance including cannon was stored in US Government Arsenals and issued in case of conflict. It wasn’t like common citizens had their cannons in the shed or whatever.
Googling around, private merchant ships of the time routinely carried cannon and this wasn’t particular to the US. Further, some of them (some of the East Indiamen) were equivalent in fire power to a ship of the line.
Thanks Karl, you beat me to it.
“The US ordnance” was ordnance owned by the US, was it not?
It’s still legal to this day (Federally and in most states) to own your own cannon or mortar, if it’s muzzle-loading.
Not even a NICS check, let alone a tax stamp.
(Exploding shells for them are regulated under the NFA as Destructive Devices, and are thus effectively banned in practical terms – at an FBI background check and $200 tax stamp each nobody would bother with them.)
I really don’t see why not, given that they allowed, indeed encouraged, private citizens to own battleships.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer#United_States
And point of fact, some people do own their own tanks. They’re quite expensive but they do exist. And you can buy a MiG fighter for a lot less money than you’d believe.
The Founders also never anticipated high-speed printing presses, radio, television, laser printers, or the internet.
So MSM reporters as well as blog commenters should all need licenses and background checks nowadays.
rickl,
I said that very thing on one of the Postings down below.
And I’d have to openly admit, as crazy as I am about defending the 2nd Amendment, that thought never occurred to me before reading it elsewhere since Newtown happened.
I’ve even begun making the offer that I’ll go to carrying a flintlock pistol and Brown Bess anywhere, with no blocks on states, cities, buildings, etc to where I can carry, IF the MSM will start using hand set type, hand pressed newspapers and putting out news from distant places after a 4 or 5 week ‘lag time’, no internet news, no TV or radio news.
If gun owners have to live in 1776 by the ‘original’ 2nd Amendment, the MZSM should have to do likewise and live by the ‘original’ 1st Amendment. Now the media hacks can draw out their soap box, find a park or street corner and start barking to the crowds, about how bad their lives suck!
I’m going out to practice shooting soap boxes!
peter of xprize fame has posted this drivel to his twitter account….
Guns were originally for armies, and were so expensive the average person couldn’t afford them.
It wasn’t simply a matter of affordability. The government didn’t trust the average citizen to own weapons.
If a common citizen owned weapons, he might try to overthrow the King or kill the King’s deer. (In England, they were *all* the King’s deer. The forests belonged to the King. They were his private hunting preserve, guarded by the royal foresters.)
Only gentlemen, nobility, and royals had the right to bear arms. “The right to bear arms” referred to what we now call (erroneously) a “coat of arms” and to actual arms (weapons).
Gentlemen ranked below the nobility but above the common man. They also had the right to use a title before their name. For military men (knights), the title was “Sir.” The others were “Master,” as in “Master William Shakespeare.” (Yes, he was officially a gentleman.)
America, by contrast, was the wild frontier. The deer did not belong to the King. For the first time, the common man had the right to hunt his own food without fear of being hanged. In America, every man was a gentleman because every man had the right to bear arms!
Of course, the King was right to fear what might happen if the common man was allowed to bear arms, because in America, what the King and government feared might happen did happen. The rabble picked up arms and otherthrew the King. The rest is history.
Of course, the Founding Fathers thought citizens should be able to own military-style weapons because they had just used military-style weapons to other throw their rightful King, something that was, if not unique in history, still shocking. Furthermore, the overthrowers did not attempt to justify their actions by claiming the King George was a “pretender” and appointing a “legitimate” replacement. They did something far more shocking. They turned political power over to the people.
The Founding Fathers did not fear the people owning military-style weapons because the people were on their side — as indicated by the first three words of the Constitution.
Medieval knights, who were of the nobility, were highly trained swordsmen and wore very expensive suits of armor.
They didn’t much like the idea of longbows and crossbows in the hands of mere commoners.
Knights were not nobility (unless they happened to hold some higher title as well). They were gentry. Nobles were the level above.
These policies come from the medieval period. Back then there were no standing armies in the modern sense of the term but it was expected that every nobleman would contribute a certain number of knights and squires and peasant infantryman depending on the size of his estate in case of war. AFAIK longbowmen were usually yeomen i.e. commoner free men owning their own farm.
My guess is that the US Constitutions concept of a militia comes from this medieval concept of an army. Later on with the growth of Nationalism and conscripted armies (e.g. Napoleonic France) concepts of national armies evolved and militias as existed at the time ceased to exist.
In 1457, King James II of Scotland banned golf and football because it took time away from archery practice. So much for keeping the common folk unarmed. The English longbow was a powerful weapon for the time but it took a good deal of practice to become and remain proficient.
By 1457, the game was evidently quite popular because it was in that year that James II of Scotland issued an order banning golf along with football. The king believed that the two relatively new sports were distracting men from their archery practice. Since having skilled archers was key to maintaining national security in the era before the proliferation of firearms, many considered his ban quite reasonable. After all, the more time citizens “wasted” on golf and soccer, the less they would spend on archery. Indeed, many Scottish and English Kings including Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV, and James IV issued similar prohibitions on the game.
Congratulations, Larry. You win the Matula Award for completely missing the point. Archers were not private citizens; they were in the employ of the King.
You’re more or less right for the Continent, but the average Briton had a right to bear arms (weapons) regardless of social class (nobility or commoner) long before the Revolution.
As Larry points out, the British state was keen on practiced, armed citizenry – because they make better soldiers, and had been for centuries.
Mass disarmament really happened there in the 20th century.
(And naturally there were bans on arms of shorter duration after, say, the Norman conquest … didn’t want those Saxons starting anything. But that didn’t last for centuries.)
Once again, I am not talking about archers (who were part-time soldiers paid to practice archery). I am talking about the ownership of personal weapons for hunting or self-defense.
Obviously, archers who were paid by the King were allowed to have archery equipment. Archery required constant practice, much more so than firearms. To draw a long bow, which had a 150-pound pull, an archer had to begin training in childhood.
Swords were another matter. Not only were there laws governing who could carry a sword, there were also regulations on the length of a sword that could be carried.
And even archers did not have the right to use their weapons for hunting. (Do you know why Robin Hood was outlawed?)
According to Daniel Justin Herman, professor of History at Central Washington University, “American citizens, not those who governed them, were sovereign. In the U.S., moreover, every adult enjoyed another right that only kings and aristocrats had held in earlier centuries: the right to hunt…. The right to hunt and the right to make political choices (vote) emerged simultaneously in the U.S.” (“Hunting Democracy,” in Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Autumn 2005.)
And even the people who want to ban assault rifles are not talking about taking guns away from the National Guard (the equivalent of the English archers).
Rand,
I think this is what you are looking for.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/piers-morgan-on-gun-laws-assault-weapons-not-what-founders-had-in-mind-with-2nd-amendment/
Piers Morgan On Gun Laws: Assault Weapons Not What Founders Had In Mind With 2nd Amendment
and
http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/17/dianne-feinstein-on-assault-weapons-they-are-designed-to-kill-large-numbers-of-people-i-dont-believe-the-second-amendment-covers-them/
Dianne Feinstein on assault weapons: “They are designed to kill large numbers of people … I don’t believe the Second Amendment covers them”
Rand,
Part II, to get by your spam filter…
and then there is this one…
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/12/15/MSNBC-Schultz-Slams-Founding-Fathers-Says-No-More-Need-For-Second-Amendment
MSNBC’s Schultz Slams Founding Fathers; No More Need For Second Amendment
and to round it off some good quotes from the founding fathers themselves via Phyllis Schlafly
http://rense.com/general2/right.htm
The Lessons Of History -
The Founding Fathers On
Right To Bear Arms
By Phyllis Schlafly – The Schlafly Report
June, 2000
Part III
From Mayor Bloomber
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-16/obama-s-got-to-try-to-get-new-gun-laws-bloomberg-says.html
[[[“We just don’t need guns everyplace,” Bloomberg said today on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We don’t need people carrying guns in public places. That’s not what the founding fathers had in mind. It doesn’t add to anybody’s safety. Quite the contrary, it makes us have a much more dangerous society.” ]]]
and
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/whoopi-goldberg-gun-control_n_2325318.html?utm_hp_ref=media
Whoopi Goldberg Demands Assault Weapons Ban (VIDEO)
Posted: 12/18/2012 5:44 pm EST | Updated: 12/18/2012 5:56 pm EST
[[[Goldberg said that gun control should begin with a ban on assault weapons because they made the least sense. Assault weapons, she said, were not what the country's founding fathers had in mind when they created the Second Amendment.
"We don't have a tank," Goldberg said. "You can't buy a bazooka. Why the hell can you buy a weapon of mass destruction?... That's the first thing that should be gone." ]]]
If you need more let me know…
That’s more than sufficient, Thomas, thank you much.
Glad to
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Doesn’t the Constitution authorize the government to issue ‘letters of marque and reprisal,’ i.e., authorization for privateers? Doesn’t that imply that they were OK with privately-owned warships?
Yep, and we’re also one of the few counties that never ratified the international treaty banning the use of privateers, perhaps because they were instrumental in the War of 1812. The target of the British attack that burned the White House was Baltimore, where we were fitting out so many privateers.
Yes, the British burned our capital in the War of 1812 and we never had the decency to thank them.
Do you think we could get them to do it again?
I’d pitch in a couple bucks to cover some of the gas and matches.