http://www.rockymountainnews.com/amole/0208amole.shtml
"Arms race? Make mine a musket
Simplicity.
Here we are again, all caught up in our recurring gun-control nightmare. The controversy won't go away. You have to wonder if the authors of our Constitution had any idea of the mischief they were causing with their one-sentence Second Amendment.
Was it late at night, and the old guys were tired and wanted to go home and get some sleep? Were they weary of arguing with each other, and were their powdered wigs getting itchy?
It seemed simple enough. The patriots had just won their independence from England, and they wanted to be sure they'd be ready if the redcoats wanted to take back their colonies.
Finally, one of them picked up a quill pen and scratched out, "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of the free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
"There, that ought to do it," he said. "Let's go home. We'll tackle the Third Amendment tomorrow. Anyone for a little nightcap?"
The National Rifle Association and other gunslingers have seized the simplicity of that moment to justify arming themselves with everything up to a 105mm howitzer. The framers of our Bill of Rights had no way of knowing their choice of the word "arms" would one day be interpreted to mean automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and that we would have a militia. It's called the National Guard.
How could they possibly have known about Tec-9 and Mac-10 pistols, or AK-47, M-16, AR-15 or the Ultimax-100 Chinese assault rifles you can pick up for around $450 at a gun show? None could predict machine guns would be widely used beginning in World War I.
They would be incredulous at the firepower of these weapons. Their frame of reference for "arms" quite simply was the musket and maybe a flint-lock pistol, or a pike, a long spear with a steel point. We can't blame them for not knowing the technological future of "arms."
They thought there was no harm in patriots having a musket handy to protect their hard-fought rights and maybe an attack by disgruntled Native Americans whose land they had illegally seized. And the trusty old musket was handy for a Thanksgiving turkey.
With this in mind, I am coming out of the closet to be a gun guy. So long as the NRA has seized that moment so long ago, I suggest we all ought to arm ourselves with muskets. I already have mine, a .50-caliber Hawken.
It is exactly like the one NRA head gunslinger Charlton Heston is holding in that magazine advertisement opposing gun control. I don't know where he got his Hawken, but my son, Jon, and I made mine. It's a beauty, too, with a polished brass butt plate with my initials engraved on it. The stock is walnut I lovingly hand-rubbed with linseed oil.
Black-powder firearms don't have the killing power of today's assault rifles. A good black-powder guy can get off about one shot per minute. If Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris had been armed with muskets, how many Columbine victims would have been spared?
OK, so muskets and Kentucky long rifles are not easily concealed, but what the heck, we gunslingers will just have to make do.
Gene Amole's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. (gamole@aol.com)
February 8, 2000 "
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My comments later ....
"Arms race? Make mine a musket
Simplicity.
Here we are again, all caught up in our recurring gun-control nightmare. The controversy won't go away. You have to wonder if the authors of our Constitution had any idea of the mischief they were causing with their one-sentence Second Amendment.
Was it late at night, and the old guys were tired and wanted to go home and get some sleep? Were they weary of arguing with each other, and were their powdered wigs getting itchy?
It seemed simple enough. The patriots had just won their independence from England, and they wanted to be sure they'd be ready if the redcoats wanted to take back their colonies.
Finally, one of them picked up a quill pen and scratched out, "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of the free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
"There, that ought to do it," he said. "Let's go home. We'll tackle the Third Amendment tomorrow. Anyone for a little nightcap?"
The National Rifle Association and other gunslingers have seized the simplicity of that moment to justify arming themselves with everything up to a 105mm howitzer. The framers of our Bill of Rights had no way of knowing their choice of the word "arms" would one day be interpreted to mean automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and that we would have a militia. It's called the National Guard.
How could they possibly have known about Tec-9 and Mac-10 pistols, or AK-47, M-16, AR-15 or the Ultimax-100 Chinese assault rifles you can pick up for around $450 at a gun show? None could predict machine guns would be widely used beginning in World War I.
They would be incredulous at the firepower of these weapons. Their frame of reference for "arms" quite simply was the musket and maybe a flint-lock pistol, or a pike, a long spear with a steel point. We can't blame them for not knowing the technological future of "arms."
They thought there was no harm in patriots having a musket handy to protect their hard-fought rights and maybe an attack by disgruntled Native Americans whose land they had illegally seized. And the trusty old musket was handy for a Thanksgiving turkey.
With this in mind, I am coming out of the closet to be a gun guy. So long as the NRA has seized that moment so long ago, I suggest we all ought to arm ourselves with muskets. I already have mine, a .50-caliber Hawken.
It is exactly like the one NRA head gunslinger Charlton Heston is holding in that magazine advertisement opposing gun control. I don't know where he got his Hawken, but my son, Jon, and I made mine. It's a beauty, too, with a polished brass butt plate with my initials engraved on it. The stock is walnut I lovingly hand-rubbed with linseed oil.
Black-powder firearms don't have the killing power of today's assault rifles. A good black-powder guy can get off about one shot per minute. If Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris had been armed with muskets, how many Columbine victims would have been spared?
OK, so muskets and Kentucky long rifles are not easily concealed, but what the heck, we gunslingers will just have to make do.
Gene Amole's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. (gamole@aol.com)
February 8, 2000 "
----------
My comments later ....
