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From: karl@cbrma.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Re: The Second Amendment
Message-ID: <12246011437.68.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sat, 11-Oct-86 15:49:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: RED.12246011437.68.MCGREW
Posted: Sat Oct 11 15:49:56 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Oct-86 18:28:44 EDT
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>I have one question: Is it accurate
>for me to believe that ownership of arms at the time of ratification
>was self-limiting, in the sense that reliable rifles were 
>sufficiently expensive that only a small fraction of the populace 
>could afford them?

No.  The Minutemen didn't exist in someone's imagination.  If you'll
pick up any garden-variety encyclopedia (I've got an Encyclopedia
Americana handy), you'll read that the Minutemen were that body of men
who were supposed to be able to be called to assemblage under arms at
a minute's notice.  The arms under which they were required to
assemble were their own, not the property of any governmental body.
Any number of other sources will point out equally well that
individual arms ownership was positively commonplace.  This weird idea
that private arms ownership is something new is not historically
correct.

>I refer, of course, to the white property-owning males who were
>the only ones allowed to vote under the original Constitution.  If
>this is true,

It's not.

>then clearly the circumstances under which the Second
>Amendment were adopted were quite different than now, when weapons of
>frightnening destructive capability are available to persons with
>relatively modest means.

You have underestimated the "destructive capability" of a bomb made
with black powder, a substance readily available to anyone requiring
it at the time of the Constitution's ratification.  Cheap, too, by the
economic standards of either period.  Not to mention the destructive
capability of a bottle of gasoline, a Molotov cocktail, or modern
nitrate-based fertilizers when mixed with modern diesel fuels.  All
easy, all cheap, all readily available to any Joe Random that wants
it.

The circumstances in this regard are not markedly different.
--
Karl Kleinpaste

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