On Sat, 25 Jan 2020 15:06:10 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 1/25/2020 2:59 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/24/2020 8:54 PM, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 24 Jan 2020 13:58:40 -0500, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 1/24/2020 12:57 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:


The founders of this nation, thank God, were very
powerful thinkers. But to you they were dopes and you
know much better.

They were fairly sharp guys. Not gods, not saints, not
infallible, but
sharp guys.

They believed in well-regulated militias. That was
understood quite well
for about 200 years.

They believed in a militia quite simply because that is
all that they
there was in the 1700's and yes, they tossed in the word
"well
regulated", apparently in hope, as none of the state
militias of the
1700's were what one might call "well regulated" and yes,
there is
sufficient history available to realize this. Read up on the
Penobscot Expedition.

It was only in very recent times that the firearms
industry and some gun
nuts got lawyers to convince activist judges that all
precedents and all
previous legal thought should be thrown into a trash can
and shot to
hell with an AR-15 fitted with a bump stock.

Read some history Frank. In the 1700's there was no
standing army in
the colonies and the only armed defense available was the
town/state
militia which by the mid 1700's were being viewed with
some dismay by
the colonial governments. When Washington tried to
mobilize the
Virginia Militia to fight against an Indian attack, in
1755, the
follow was written,
" he experienced all the evils of insubordination among
the troups,
perverseness in the militia, inactivity in the officers,
disregard of
orders, and reluctance in the civil authorities to render
a proper
support."

Thus, I suggest, the term "well regulated" might well have
more then a
cursory meaning.

As for AR-15's I might comment that contrary to popular
belief the
bulk of the "continental Army, and the militia before them
were armed
with smooth bore muskets - the rapid fire weapon of the
era. From all
the records I can find there were in the neighborhood of
1,500
riflemen, in total, in the Colonial army during the war.
However
rifles may have been a factor in the Colonial victory in
the battle of
The Battle of King's Mountain.

I can only assume due to the rapid acceptance of fully
automatic
weapons by various forces in modern times that had a
weapon like the
AR-15 been available in 1775 that both sides would have
adopted it :-)
Aft all both side had adopted cannon.

John, you haven't written anything new to me. And nothing
that you've written has rebutted what I said.

The Constitution was written in a time when militias with
muskets were the best insurance against an overseas power
taking control of the territory of the brand new United
States. Those militias needed to be well regulated, or they
themselves could turn the place into 1990s Mogadishu, but in
slow motion, with at least 15 seconds between shots.

We now have millions of fat Rambo wannabees buying guns not
to keep woodchucks out of the garden or put rabbits on the
table. They're choosing weapons with fantasy battles in
mind, outfitting them with magazines that have no practical
use outside a firefight, and pretending that they're going
to use them against anyone who demands their background be
checked. With funding from the industry supplying their
toys, they've gotten the courts to twist away from true
originalist interpretations of the 2nd amendment.

What these Rambos do is not what your family did in New
England. It's not what the Founders imagined in the 1700s.
It's not what happens in other economically advanced
countries. And our gun death stats and mass shooting stats
show the results.


You obviously do not know all that many firearms owners.

But I do believe that Frank's rants about AR-15 owners are at least
partially true.

In the 1960's I worked in a gunsmith shop for a while, in Shreveport,
La., and yes, semi-automatic weapons with big magazines were
available - the M1 carbine, for one - but I never saw or heard of
anyone trying to convert them to full automatic, or taking buckets
full of ammo to the range and shooting it off brrrrrrat.

Quite the opposite, in fact, the shop was well known for shotgun work
particularly trap and skeet guns and I was hired specifically to
enlarge the business into accurate varmint rifles. What appeared to be
the major desire in shooting, in those days, was to shoot accurately.

I would also add that the shop was on retainer to two pawn shops in
the city to inspect all firearms that they resold to ensure that they
were safe to use and also serviced the city police's weapons, so we
were exposed to a great deal of the gun business in that part of
Louisiana.

My own suspicion is that as the number of veterans in the U.S. is
rapidly declining there are fewer and fewer individuals that have ever
been in a situation where they might have had to fire a weapon in
anger. Or have even been trained to fire a gun in anger.

In 1980 18% of all U.S. adults were serving, or had served, in the
military. In 2014 the number had decreased to 8%. Among U.S. men the
numbers are even larger with 45% serving, or had served, in 1960 to
37% in 1980 to 16% in 2014.
https://tinyurl.com/wkwkshp

Another thing that may be relevant is that in 1950 some 36% of the
U.S. population lived in a rural area where guns might have been far
more common? Growing up in rural New England it seemed to me that many
families had an old shotgun in the corner in case a fox got into the
chicken house.

Today (2010) only 19% of the population reside in a rural area and
thus guns may be a strange and dangerous object to a much larger
percent of the population.
--
cheers,

John B.