On Wed, 10 Dec 2014 16:27:18 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2014 11:14:29 -0700, Winston_Smith
wrote:

On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 20:11:24 -0500, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 16:51:11 -0700, Winston_Smith wrote:
On Mon, 08 Dec 2014 00:53:24 -0500, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Sun, 07 Dec 2014 21:58:48 -0600, "David R. Birch" wrote:

There is nothing in American Constitutional history, or any other
American or British history, that supports the idea that limitations
on rights are necessarily an "abuse." That's an idea that was cooked
up over the last half-century or so by the gun nutz.

With rights come responsibilities. The only justification of limiting
a right is when irresponsible behavior occurs.

No. There are the needs of the justice system, in limiting the 4th.
And there is legal precedent, going back to common law, from which our
legal principles are derived, for "compelling state interest" to limit
rights.

The revolution was against government business as usual.

No it wasn't. Keeping business as usual, or how it was supposed to be
under the laws and common law traditions of Britain, is EXACTLY what
it was for.

As Edmund Burke said in the British Parliament, defending the
revolutionaries in America, they were revolting because their rights
as Englishmen had been usurped.

They weren't fighting for a new type of government. They wanted the
existing one restored to its proper function. As Jefferson laid out in
the Declaration of Independence, the problem was the usurpations and
abuses of power that the king, and also the parliament, imposed on the
colonists by not treating them like other Englishmen were treated.

No one wanted
to keep all the bad features that were in place.

Years later, when they realized the Articles of Confederation were too
weak, they designed a new form of federal government. As James Madison
put it, it was a "mixed" system, federal and national, and it replaced
the interaction of a king and a parliament with checks and balances
within a three-branch representative democracy.

They weren't trying to eliminate "bad features," unless you count the
monarchy as a bad feature, and the lack of checks and balances within
Parliament as a weakness. They were trying to get a similar result
without a monarchy, and to deal with the independence of the states in
a federalized structure.


There are more than one body of common law and they are not in
agreement. In large measure they were framed by the nobles and their
courts.

Blackstone's Commentaries was the accepted, unified explanation of the
common law. It's what our own founders used as a basis for much of our
law, and which the earliest courts uned as explanation for what was
understood at the rime the Constitution was written.


The Constitution told the government what it's rights were.
"Compelling state interest" is an invention of government to exceed
those limits.

For a recent example, Employment Div. vs. Smith, 1990, in
which the religious right of the petitioner to eat peyote was rejected
because it conflicted with drug policy.

The state ruled a right had to go because it conflicted with a policy
the government decided to institute. Judging yourself to justify your
own wishes is a wonderful thing.

There are many such cases throughout history. For the most part, it's
up to legislatures, and reviewed by courts, to judge what those
interests are.

In accordance with the limits to government power granted by the
people. The lower legislatures, too get their powers, and limits, from
the people. Courts once judged blacks are property and Indians are 3/5
of a person (or something similar). Courts get it wrong. Sometimes
honestly, sometimes because politicians appointed judges that thought
"the right way".

"Courts get it wrong"?? Winston, the 3/5 rule was written into the
Constitution itself! See Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the
United States Constitution.

That wasn't the courts. That was the people's elected representatives,
and ratified by the states' elected legislatures.

You're making this up. It's in the Constitution, explicitly. Again,
there is no American history to back up what you're saying.


We've developed a very cockeyed idea of "rights" over the last
half-century or so. The 2nd, for example, is a derivative right, the
fundamental right being a right to defend one's life and property, and
only exists because it's a practical means of exercising the
fundamental right.

Not according to the writings of the founding fathers. They were clear
that the people must not be denied the means to revolt anytime
government became abusive. Your rationalization strikes me as so much
new mumbo jumbo. It's only "over the last half-century or so" that
government decided to limit ownership of arms. If we need a specific
date, I'll submit the decade or so when the likes of Bonnie and Clyde
outgunned police. J. Edgar did not like that. Machine guns were
tightly regulated, the details of a shotgun were legislated.

I have lived peacefully with firearms. I handle them responsibly.
Store them responsibly. Shoot them responsibly. I have never
threatened anyone with them or by any other means. I have never had an
encounter with the law bigger than a parking ticket fifty years ago.

Well, you've got me beat. I got a speeding ticket in 1982. g

There is absolutely no grounds to limit MY right. To do so most
certainly is the same as abusing my proper citizen behavior.

No. There is no legal history or philosophical history to support your
position. It's only wishful thinking on your part.

I point out that your position always goes back to "legal history".
THAT is the government making legal what they decided they wanted to
do.

As for the philosophy, I'd say it's another example of the failure of
logic that lies behind all ideologies. Those conclusions almost always
fail because of incomplete premises. But that's for another day.

I see any logic that imposes limitations on the 2nd as flakey at best.

That's because you have made up the history to suit your desires. The
"flakiness" refers to a back-and-forth argument about the relation
between the demands of the militia and the individual right.

You keep ignoring the writings of the founding fathers. We do not need
to have an argument to find out what they were thinking.

A made up issue by the gun grabbers.

No. A flaky inconsistency by the Court. As I said, it's one of the
logical failures in Heller.

The court. All rationales are ultimately based on the courts. That's
your whole argument. SCOTUS is pretty good as those things go but
courts ARE a political animal.

Once the Court decided that "the right of the people..." is based on a
historical right to self-defense and other legitimate uses of
firearms, one that was accepted and understood by the Founders (and
that is what the Court claims; I agree, FWIW),

The court decided what it needed to decide to support the verdict it
was handing down.

the militia issue
becomes a distraction and a logical pit trap. Scalia spent all of that
effort describing the militia clause as a "sufficient but not
necessary preface"; there was no more reason to discuss it,

Damned convenient for his decision, no?

particularly in relation to Heller's petition, in which any militia
issue was de minimus to the case that the Court was supposed to
address. It made no sense in context or out of it.

The court. Take away what the courts have given us 150 years after the
Constitution, and you have no arguments left to make.

First, the Constitution is about what powers the people grant the
government. The BORs is about individual rights. Separate issues taken
up at separate times. Every darn one of them is about individual,
personal rights. Only the gun grabbers say one of ten is somehow an
odd ball that doesn't fit it's context.

The Constitution is about what the government may do; the BOR is about
what the government may NOT do.

Second, the personal writings of the founding fathers make very clear
what they think about individual rights to own weapons. You need
research no farther than that to determine what they had in mind.

You have to be careful about the "writings" of the Founders. They were
in a long-running debate; many, if not most of their writings were
polemics they wrote to argue one case or another

Sounds like rejecting what doesn't fit. Simply a way to nudge the FF
writings off the table.

What matters, first and foremost, is what was voted by the relevant
bodies. In the federal context, we have nothing to go on there
regarding the 2nd.

The foxes get to vote about how to guard the henhouse.

As I said earlier, the scholarship conducted since the 1979s, which
dug up a lot of new references that give some guidance, have been
overwhelmingly in favor of an individual RKBA. But what is convincing
in a legal sense, applying the "original understanding" judicial
doctrine, is the evidence that the RKBA understanding was the original
understanding. "Original intent" be damned. It's clear what the intent
of the 2nd was: to satisfy the anti-federalists that the federal
government wasn't going to disarm the people who made up the state
militias.

I guess this is where we will forever disagree. To me, your "legal
sense" is something the government came up with to justify what it
felt like doing. I suppose we can circle that for a week and not get
anywhere.

The pertinent question was, as I mentioned in my comment about the
definite article (the word "the"), what was the nature of this
understood right? Beyond the founders' polemics and often stem-winding
rhetoric, the total weight of the history favored the individual RKBA.
And, thus the Court decided.

I see that as rejecting the writings of the people who wrote the
Constitution so we can get on with the business of interpreting it as
the powers that be want to.

But as the Court's reference to Blackstone's _Commentaries on the Laws
of England_ shows, there never was an understanding, original or
otherwise, that "rights" are absolute. In fact, the Founders were so
loose in their references to "rights" (see the Federalist Papers --
the "right" of a governor to nominate, Federalist 69; "rights" of
jurisdiction, Federalist 18; the "right" of the President to require
opinions of department leaders, Federalist 74, etc., etc.), that you
have to wonder if you and they are talking about the same things.


The Court
doesn't do a good job of explaining how the necessity to have an armed
militia relates to a right to keep arms for other purposes, and, thus,
to delineate the kinds of guns that are protected.

Perhaps the authors of the Constitution were thinking "guns". Just,
simply "guns". "Kinds of guns" is a much later idea introduced by gun
grabbers.

The Court in Heller quoted itself in Miller: "The Government’s brief
spent two pages discussing English legal sources, concluding “that at
least the carrying of weapons without lawful occasion or excuse was
always a crime” and that (because of the class-based restrictions and
the prohibition on terrorizing people with dangerous or unusual
weapons) “the early English law did not guarantee an unrestricted
right to bear arms.”

That was a quote supporting the decision in Heller. It could have
supported the limitations of rights in any case. That was the
understanding in the late 18th century. Like you're claiming for the
RKBA itself, the non-absoluteness of rights was so universally
understood that the arguments you and Scotty are making would have had
them wondering if we'd lost our minds during the intervening two
centuries. g

Some of the most rabid say black powder muzzle loaders will
be OK. The founding fathers made very clear in their writings they saw
the possible day when a new revolution may be required to displace a
bad government and the citizens should not be denied the means to do
so.

Maybe they anticipated smokeless powder...


Besides, the BOR does not even mention "guns". It says "the right of
the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Arms. A sword is an arm. A spear is an arm. A club; a mace. No "arm"
is singled out as special. It says arms may not be restricted. Period.

"Dangerous and unusual" is a legislative decision, historically.


Gun grabbers morph "arms" to "guns" and then morph "guns" to "firearms
newer than the date the BOR was composed". That is exactly why the
founders used a generic description. "arms, shall not be infringed."

It's always exciting to talk to someone who knows why the Founders
used certain words. Maybe you can tell us why they wrote the 2nd as a
Nominative Absolute construction, the most ambiguous construction in
the English language. Many people have wondered that. g

That kind of detailed linguistic detail is beyond my poor education.
But what it says is clear.

But then it goes on
to delineate those guns in favor of those in common use for civilian
purposes. In Heller, the Court actually cites contradictory state
court decisions on the matter.

At the time the Constitution and BOR were written, military and
civilians guns were the same. Unless you were wealthy in which case
you had better than what the government bought. In fact, not only was
the type of gun the same, it was often the same gun in the same hands.

To try to split that single firearm into two worlds is an exercise in
fantasy.

If we grant that case, and it's not inaccurate, and since you know why
the Founders used certain words, how would they have handled the issue
of today's military vunderguns in the context of "dangerous and
unusual" for civilian use?

Punish the crap out of people that mis-use anything, that do any sort
of harm by being irresponsible, and leave Joe Sixpack alone.

Remember, the firearms of the Revolution were the vunderguns of the
day and they were not denied.

I see the Constitution as speaking of principles, not defining
technological limits. The left often disagrees.

All guns are dangerous. By that logic we can't have automobiles or
airplanes.

"For civilian use" goes right back to my point that the civilians tell
the government what it can do, not vice-versa. Government is the hired
help, not the master.

After all, that was the accepted common law understanding.

Accepted, common law, and understanding are three pretty vague words.

BTW, despite what someone said in this thread -- maybe it was you --
military muskets that shoot an ounce ball (Brown Bess, Charleville
musket) were NOT very ommon civilian guns in many parts of the
country. In fact, the Virginia militia had to specify that type of gun
as a requirement, and many men couldn't afford to buy one. So armories
were established in several states to supply military muskets in time
of need.

And many men COULD afford them. Citizens owned guns that met military
specs. Thanks for the confirmation.

Many did not. I can dig up some quotes from Jefferson lamenting how
the men of central and southern Virginia didn'd have any guns suitable
for use in the militia. But I'm tired of that, so please don't make me
go find it.

There is no disagreement between us. Some could, some could not. The
point is, those who could had military spec firearms and that didn't
even raise a comment.

The Court's reference to "common use" and the militia requirement just
doesn't hold together as a coherent argument. Scalia relies, instead,
on only those cases that affirmed an individual right exclusive of a
militia right, and simply disparages those that disagreed.

The court's anything came long after the intentions of the authors of
the Constitution were said and put on paper.

Their intentions don't matter. The understanding of what they said is
what matters. That's what the states ratified.

And that understanding was accepted by the government until a half
century ago by your own statement. The shift in "what it means" is a
relatively new development.

I suppose we have pretty well beat this to death. Have a closer and
let's be done - at least for this thread.

Ok, I'm out of time, too. My closer will be some quotes from the
Founders on the subject of the limitations ot rights. I'll just draw a
few examples from the Washington & Lee Law Review's "Natural Rights
And The Founding Fathers-The Virginians." W&L is, or was when this was
written (1960) a very conservative school.

The article is very good and you would find much to like about it. It
discusses "absolute rights" in the context in which the Founders wrote
about it -- as "natural rights." But naural rights, said the Founders,
are limited by the principles of "natural law." Natural law is sort of
a briar patch, but you can see how that translated into representative
democracy by reading the article.

http://tinyurl.com/n64l6cu

""It is at all times difficult to draw with precision the line between
those rights which must be surrendered and those which may be
reserved." -- George Washington

"This, like all other natural rights, may be abridged or modified in
its exercise by their own consent, or by the law of those who depute
them, if they meet in the right of others." -- Thomas Jefferson

"All men are entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to
the dictates of conscience, unpunished, and unrestrained; by the
magistrate, unless the preservation of equal liberty and the existence
of the state are manifestly endangered." -- James Madison

Winston, if I didn't think you were serious and reasonable, I wouldn't
waste my time with this, gut the conclusion of that article is worth
reading:

"It is a great disservice to the memory of both Jefferson and Madison
to cite them in defense of absolute, libertarian notions. Freedom of
printing and speaking was no more an absolute right, devoid of social
control, to them than it was to their contemporary Founding Fathers.
Not only did the communicative right end when it deviated from the
truth, but when it failed to respect the legitimate concerns of others
it was equally subject to restraint. No Virginian of the time was more
concerned for freedom of speech and press than Patrick Henry, and yet
he stated in the debates of the Virginia Ratifying Convention of June,
1788: "I acknowledge that licentiousness is dangerous, and that it
ought to be provided against."'

Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson believed that the 1st Amendment's
limitation was that you couldn't tell lies without being held
accountable.

So, read it if you want. If you do, you'll know more about the subject
than 99.9% of Americans -- especially gun-rights extremists, who
generally know a lot less than they think they do. American history
from the time of the founding upends half of their beliefs about
"rights."

Ed, the American Colonies had firearm control laws dating back nearly
to their establishment. The Virginia Colony banned ownership of
firearms by Negroes in 1641, The English Government banned selling or
trading firearms to Indians, in the colonies, in 1641. The
Massachusetts Bay colony banned the carrying of firearms in public
places in 1690.

The mandatory owning of a firearm by the able bodied was also
established from very early in by the Colonies, and this was very
specifically aimed at the maintaining of a Militia.

--
Cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:38:41 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

snip


Ed, the American Colonies had firearm control laws dating back nearly
to their establishment. The Virginia Colony banned ownership of
firearms by Negroes in 1641, The English Government banned selling or
trading firearms to Indians, in the colonies, in 1641. The
Massachusetts Bay colony banned the carrying of firearms in public
places in 1690.

Right.


The mandatory owning of a firearm by the able bodied was also
established from very early in by the Colonies, and this was very
specifically aimed at the maintaining of a Militia.

Yes, but it's unclear about how successful that was. Washington
estimated that 15% of his volunteers came without arms. As I said
above, Jefferson lamented that many Virginians had no appropriate
guns.

I don't know the answer to that, but I wouldn't make too many
assumptions.

--
Ed Huntress

On Wed, 10 Dec 2014 21:40:39 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:38:41 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

snip


Ed, the American Colonies had firearm control laws dating back nearly
to their establishment. The Virginia Colony banned ownership of
firearms by Negroes in 1641, The English Government banned selling or
trading firearms to Indians, in the colonies, in 1641. The
Massachusetts Bay colony banned the carrying of firearms in public
places in 1690.

Right.


The mandatory owning of a firearm by the able bodied was also
established from very early in by the Colonies, and this was very
specifically aimed at the maintaining of a Militia.

Yes, but it's unclear about how successful that was. Washington
estimated that 15% of his volunteers came without arms. As I said
above, Jefferson lamented that many Virginians had no appropriate
guns.

I don't know the answer to that, but I wouldn't make too many
assumptions.

A proper military firearm was a huge cost to a great many of the early
settlers, given that it is likely that cash money was not particularly
common and many probably evaded the purchase, if possible :-)

Several years ago Michael Bellesiles, a professor of history at Emory
University, published a book entitled "Arming America: The Origins of
a National Gun Culture", in which he discusses firearm ownership in
revolutionary America.

I recently read some excerpts from the book:

---------------------
A functional gun would cost five to six pounds, which is equivalent to
a year's wages for an unskilled laborer, about half a year's wages for
a skilled artisan.
--------------------
In the two years before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the
militia of New England frantically prepared for what they knew was
going to be a military conflict. They began stockpiling gunpowder and
purchasing firearms from Europe--ironically, even from
England--stockpiling them in the traditional centers for maintenance
of weapons, which would be town halls. On the eve of the Revolution,
Massachusetts had 21,549 guns for a province of 250,000 people. Only
the New England colonies were doing this; the rest were hopeful that
peace could be maintained.
--------------------
He goes on to say, "I was studying probate records, the most complete
record of property ownership in early America. They contain lists of
absolutely everything that a person owned--scraps of metal, broken
glasses, bent spoons, broken plows. Everything was recorded because it
was important to these families how the inheritance was going to be
divided, especially given how little property there was. I found guns
in only 10 percent of the probate records, and half of those guns were
not in working order. Since then, I've read 11,150 probate records,
samples over a 100-year period, and I have found guns in 13 percent of
the probate records. Prior to 1850, the gun is just not there.
-------------------
States kept inventories of weapons. That also was shocking to me, a
gun owner, I'd always thought the guns weren't registered. We don't
want the government to know who has guns and where. So I was surprised
to find all the governments regularly took a census of firearms. They
sent the constables door-to-door to ask, "What guns do you have? What
condition are they in?" They felt is was essential to know who had
guns, and how usable they were. There was no opposition. I wanted just
one sentence, someone who thought it was wrong. But no one in any
legislative record complained about the gun census.
------------------
We bought almost 100,000 firearms from the French and Dutch. After the
Revolution, the government made guns a priority. One of the first acts
of the new government was the creation of two armories at Harper's
Ferry and Springfield, which started to produce arms at a rate of
about 2000 a year.
------------------

Apparent reality is not (was not) what some think it was :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 18:52:25 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2014 21:40:39 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:38:41 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

snip


Ed, the American Colonies had firearm control laws dating back nearly
to their establishment. The Virginia Colony banned ownership of
firearms by Negroes in 1641, The English Government banned selling or
trading firearms to Indians, in the colonies, in 1641. The
Massachusetts Bay colony banned the carrying of firearms in public
places in 1690.

Right.


The mandatory owning of a firearm by the able bodied was also
established from very early in by the Colonies, and this was very
specifically aimed at the maintaining of a Militia.

Yes, but it's unclear about how successful that was. Washington
estimated that 15% of his volunteers came without arms. As I said
above, Jefferson lamented that many Virginians had no appropriate
guns.

I don't know the answer to that, but I wouldn't make too many
assumptions.

A proper military firearm was a huge cost to a great many of the early
settlers, given that it is likely that cash money was not particularly
common and many probably evaded the purchase, if possible :-)

Several years ago Michael Bellesiles, a professor of history at Emory
University, published a book entitled "Arming America: The Origins of
a National Gun Culture", in which he discusses firearm ownership in
revolutionary America.

I recently read some excerpts from the book:

---------------------
A functional gun would cost five to six pounds, which is equivalent to
a year's wages for an unskilled laborer, about half a year's wages for
a skilled artisan.
--------------------
In the two years before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the
militia of New England frantically prepared for what they knew was
going to be a military conflict. They began stockpiling gunpowder and
purchasing firearms from Europe--ironically, even from
England--stockpiling them in the traditional centers for maintenance
of weapons, which would be town halls. On the eve of the Revolution,
Massachusetts had 21,549 guns for a province of 250,000 people. Only
the New England colonies were doing this; the rest were hopeful that
peace could be maintained.
--------------------
He goes on to say, "I was studying probate records, the most complete
record of property ownership in early America. They contain lists of
absolutely everything that a person owned--scraps of metal, broken
glasses, bent spoons, broken plows. Everything was recorded because it
was important to these families how the inheritance was going to be
divided, especially given how little property there was. I found guns
in only 10 percent of the probate records, and half of those guns were
not in working order. Since then, I've read 11,150 probate records,
samples over a 100-year period, and I have found guns in 13 percent of
the probate records. Prior to 1850, the gun is just not there.
-------------------
States kept inventories of weapons. That also was shocking to me, a
gun owner, I'd always thought the guns weren't registered. We don't
want the government to know who has guns and where. So I was surprised
to find all the governments regularly took a census of firearms. They
sent the constables door-to-door to ask, "What guns do you have? What
condition are they in?" They felt is was essential to know who had
guns, and how usable they were. There was no opposition. I wanted just
one sentence, someone who thought it was wrong. But no one in any
legislative record complained about the gun census.
------------------
We bought almost 100,000 firearms from the French and Dutch. After the
Revolution, the government made guns a priority. One of the first acts
of the new government was the creation of two armories at Harper's
Ferry and Springfield, which started to produce arms at a rate of
about 2000 a year.
------------------

Apparent reality is not (was not) what some think it was :-)

Um, as it happens, that book has been thoroughly debunked:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America

I haven't followed up to see if anyone re-researched it.

--
Ed Huntress

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 07:43:36 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 18:52:25 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2014 21:40:39 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:38:41 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

snip


Ed, the American Colonies had firearm control laws dating back nearly
to their establishment. The Virginia Colony banned ownership of
firearms by Negroes in 1641, The English Government banned selling or
trading firearms to Indians, in the colonies, in 1641. The
Massachusetts Bay colony banned the carrying of firearms in public
places in 1690.

Right.


The mandatory owning of a firearm by the able bodied was also
established from very early in by the Colonies, and this was very
specifically aimed at the maintaining of a Militia.

Yes, but it's unclear about how successful that was. Washington
estimated that 15% of his volunteers came without arms. As I said
above, Jefferson lamented that many Virginians had no appropriate
guns.

I don't know the answer to that, but I wouldn't make too many
assumptions.

A proper military firearm was a huge cost to a great many of the early
settlers, given that it is likely that cash money was not particularly
common and many probably evaded the purchase, if possible :-)

Several years ago Michael Bellesiles, a professor of history at Emory
University, published a book entitled "Arming America: The Origins of
a National Gun Culture", in which he discusses firearm ownership in
revolutionary America.

I recently read some excerpts from the book:

---------------------
A functional gun would cost five to six pounds, which is equivalent to
a year's wages for an unskilled laborer, about half a year's wages for
a skilled artisan.
--------------------
In the two years before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the
militia of New England frantically prepared for what they knew was
going to be a military conflict. They began stockpiling gunpowder and
purchasing firearms from Europe--ironically, even from
England--stockpiling them in the traditional centers for maintenance
of weapons, which would be town halls. On the eve of the Revolution,
Massachusetts had 21,549 guns for a province of 250,000 people. Only
the New England colonies were doing this; the rest were hopeful that
peace could be maintained.
--------------------
He goes on to say, "I was studying probate records, the most complete
record of property ownership in early America. They contain lists of
absolutely everything that a person owned--scraps of metal, broken
glasses, bent spoons, broken plows. Everything was recorded because it
was important to these families how the inheritance was going to be
divided, especially given how little property there was. I found guns
in only 10 percent of the probate records, and half of those guns were
not in working order. Since then, I've read 11,150 probate records,
samples over a 100-year period, and I have found guns in 13 percent of
the probate records. Prior to 1850, the gun is just not there.
-------------------
States kept inventories of weapons. That also was shocking to me, a
gun owner, I'd always thought the guns weren't registered. We don't
want the government to know who has guns and where. So I was surprised
to find all the governments regularly took a census of firearms. They
sent the constables door-to-door to ask, "What guns do you have? What
condition are they in?" They felt is was essential to know who had
guns, and how usable they were. There was no opposition. I wanted just
one sentence, someone who thought it was wrong. But no one in any
legislative record complained about the gun census.
------------------
We bought almost 100,000 firearms from the French and Dutch. After the
Revolution, the government made guns a priority. One of the first acts
of the new government was the creation of two armories at Harper's
Ferry and Springfield, which started to produce arms at a rate of
about 2000 a year.
------------------

Apparent reality is not (was not) what some think it was :-)

Um, as it happens, that book has been thoroughly debunked:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America

I haven't followed up to see if anyone re-researched it.

I did some additional reading and there seems to be considerable
controversy about the book. I didn't read the critiques in detail -
it's getting lat :-) - but generally they seem to be concerned with
details.

Example: In one statement the author says that "muzzle-loading
firearms were unreliable and inaccurate" and goes on to say that only
3.5% of muzzle-loading hunters bagged a deer. A critic quotes a
different year's records and demonstrates that 10.5% of muzzle-loading
hunters killed a deer. The difference appears to be the difference in
the length of the hunting season. The Author quoted a year with a
short season while the critic quotes the records from a long season.

But it probably doesn't matter as everyone has preconceived ideas and
like religion, everyone is certain that they know what is the correct
one.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 20:42:22 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 07:43:36 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 18:52:25 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2014 21:40:39 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:38:41 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

snip


Ed, the American Colonies had firearm control laws dating back nearly
to their establishment. The Virginia Colony banned ownership of
firearms by Negroes in 1641, The English Government banned selling or
trading firearms to Indians, in the colonies, in 1641. The
Massachusetts Bay colony banned the carrying of firearms in public
places in 1690.

Right.


The mandatory owning of a firearm by the able bodied was also
established from very early in by the Colonies, and this was very
specifically aimed at the maintaining of a Militia.

Yes, but it's unclear about how successful that was. Washington
estimated that 15% of his volunteers came without arms. As I said
above, Jefferson lamented that many Virginians had no appropriate
guns.

I don't know the answer to that, but I wouldn't make too many
assumptions.

A proper military firearm was a huge cost to a great many of the early
settlers, given that it is likely that cash money was not particularly
common and many probably evaded the purchase, if possible :-)

Several years ago Michael Bellesiles, a professor of history at Emory
University, published a book entitled "Arming America: The Origins of
a National Gun Culture", in which he discusses firearm ownership in
revolutionary America.

I recently read some excerpts from the book:

---------------------
A functional gun would cost five to six pounds, which is equivalent to
a year's wages for an unskilled laborer, about half a year's wages for
a skilled artisan.
--------------------
In the two years before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the
militia of New England frantically prepared for what they knew was
going to be a military conflict. They began stockpiling gunpowder and
purchasing firearms from Europe--ironically, even from
England--stockpiling them in the traditional centers for maintenance
of weapons, which would be town halls. On the eve of the Revolution,
Massachusetts had 21,549 guns for a province of 250,000 people. Only
the New England colonies were doing this; the rest were hopeful that
peace could be maintained.
--------------------
He goes on to say, "I was studying probate records, the most complete
record of property ownership in early America. They contain lists of
absolutely everything that a person owned--scraps of metal, broken
glasses, bent spoons, broken plows. Everything was recorded because it
was important to these families how the inheritance was going to be
divided, especially given how little property there was. I found guns
in only 10 percent of the probate records, and half of those guns were
not in working order. Since then, I've read 11,150 probate records,
samples over a 100-year period, and I have found guns in 13 percent of
the probate records. Prior to 1850, the gun is just not there.
-------------------
States kept inventories of weapons. That also was shocking to me, a
gun owner, I'd always thought the guns weren't registered. We don't
want the government to know who has guns and where. So I was surprised
to find all the governments regularly took a census of firearms. They
sent the constables door-to-door to ask, "What guns do you have? What
condition are they in?" They felt is was essential to know who had
guns, and how usable they were. There was no opposition. I wanted just
one sentence, someone who thought it was wrong. But no one in any
legislative record complained about the gun census.
------------------
We bought almost 100,000 firearms from the French and Dutch. After the
Revolution, the government made guns a priority. One of the first acts
of the new government was the creation of two armories at Harper's
Ferry and Springfield, which started to produce arms at a rate of
about 2000 a year.
------------------

Apparent reality is not (was not) what some think it was :-)

Um, as it happens, that book has been thoroughly debunked:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America

I haven't followed up to see if anyone re-researched it.

I did some additional reading and there seems to be considerable
controversy about the book. I didn't read the critiques in detail -
it's getting lat :-) - but generally they seem to be concerned with
details.

Example: In one statement the author says that "muzzle-loading
firearms were unreliable and inaccurate" and goes on to say that only
3.5% of muzzle-loading hunters bagged a deer. A critic quotes a
different year's records and demonstrates that 10.5% of muzzle-loading
hunters killed a deer. The difference appears to be the difference in
the length of the hunting season. The Author quoted a year with a
short season while the critic quotes the records from a long season.

But it probably doesn't matter as everyone has preconceived ideas and
like religion, everyone is certain that they know what is the correct
one.

Well, I try to avoid preconceived ideas and am most interested in the
facts. In this case, I haven't dug into the issue enough to know what
the facts are.

The author of that book caught a lot of hell, but the big objection
was to his apparent falsification of gun-ownership statistics in the
late Colonial period. His reporting of things like the very high cost
of a military musket, for average yoeman farmers, is true and is
well-documented elsewhere.

The _American Rifleman_ had an interesting article some years ago
about American-made guns used in the Revolutionary War. They were a
real bunch of dogs and cats, assembled from parts made all over the
world. The "ounce ball" (.69 cal. ball, larger bore) military muskets,
like the Brown Bess and the Charleville, among others, apparently were
not very common among civilians before the war. There were
smaller-bore muskets in common use near the coasts; on the frontier,
rifles were more common, in much smaller calibers. Typically they ran
from around .36 to .50 cal., although they got larger as they got
older because they had to be "freshed out" from time to time by a
gunsmith.

The Continental Army acquired more and better muskets during the
course of the war.

--
Ed Huntress

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 10:14:32 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 20:42:22 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 07:43:36 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 18:52:25 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2014 21:40:39 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:38:41 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

snip


Ed, the American Colonies had firearm control laws dating back nearly
to their establishment. The Virginia Colony banned ownership of
firearms by Negroes in 1641, The English Government banned selling or
trading firearms to Indians, in the colonies, in 1641. The
Massachusetts Bay colony banned the carrying of firearms in public
places in 1690.

Right.


The mandatory owning of a firearm by the able bodied was also
established from very early in by the Colonies, and this was very
specifically aimed at the maintaining of a Militia.

Yes, but it's unclear about how successful that was. Washington
estimated that 15% of his volunteers came without arms. As I said
above, Jefferson lamented that many Virginians had no appropriate
guns.

I don't know the answer to that, but I wouldn't make too many
assumptions.

A proper military firearm was a huge cost to a great many of the early
settlers, given that it is likely that cash money was not particularly
common and many probably evaded the purchase, if possible :-)

Several years ago Michael Bellesiles, a professor of history at Emory
University, published a book entitled "Arming America: The Origins of
a National Gun Culture", in which he discusses firearm ownership in
revolutionary America.

I recently read some excerpts from the book:

---------------------
A functional gun would cost five to six pounds, which is equivalent to
a year's wages for an unskilled laborer, about half a year's wages for
a skilled artisan.
--------------------
In the two years before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the
militia of New England frantically prepared for what they knew was
going to be a military conflict. They began stockpiling gunpowder and
purchasing firearms from Europe--ironically, even from
England--stockpiling them in the traditional centers for maintenance
of weapons, which would be town halls. On the eve of the Revolution,
Massachusetts had 21,549 guns for a province of 250,000 people. Only
the New England colonies were doing this; the rest were hopeful that
peace could be maintained.
--------------------
He goes on to say, "I was studying probate records, the most complete
record of property ownership in early America. They contain lists of
absolutely everything that a person owned--scraps of metal, broken
glasses, bent spoons, broken plows. Everything was recorded because it
was important to these families how the inheritance was going to be
divided, especially given how little property there was. I found guns
in only 10 percent of the probate records, and half of those guns were
not in working order. Since then, I've read 11,150 probate records,
samples over a 100-year period, and I have found guns in 13 percent of
the probate records. Prior to 1850, the gun is just not there.
-------------------
States kept inventories of weapons. That also was shocking to me, a
gun owner, I'd always thought the guns weren't registered. We don't
want the government to know who has guns and where. So I was surprised
to find all the governments regularly took a census of firearms. They
sent the constables door-to-door to ask, "What guns do you have? What
condition are they in?" They felt is was essential to know who had
guns, and how usable they were. There was no opposition. I wanted just
one sentence, someone who thought it was wrong. But no one in any
legislative record complained about the gun census.
------------------
We bought almost 100,000 firearms from the French and Dutch. After the
Revolution, the government made guns a priority. One of the first acts
of the new government was the creation of two armories at Harper's
Ferry and Springfield, which started to produce arms at a rate of
about 2000 a year.
------------------

Apparent reality is not (was not) what some think it was :-)

Um, as it happens, that book has been thoroughly debunked:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America

I haven't followed up to see if anyone re-researched it.

I did some additional reading and there seems to be considerable
controversy about the book. I didn't read the critiques in detail -
it's getting lat :-) - but generally they seem to be concerned with
details.

Example: In one statement the author says that "muzzle-loading
firearms were unreliable and inaccurate" and goes on to say that only
3.5% of muzzle-loading hunters bagged a deer. A critic quotes a
different year's records and demonstrates that 10.5% of muzzle-loading
hunters killed a deer. The difference appears to be the difference in
the length of the hunting season. The Author quoted a year with a
short season while the critic quotes the records from a long season.

But it probably doesn't matter as everyone has preconceived ideas and
like religion, everyone is certain that they know what is the correct
one.

Well, I try to avoid preconceived ideas and am most interested in the
facts. In this case, I haven't dug into the issue enough to know what
the facts are.

The author of that book caught a lot of hell, but the big objection
was to his apparent falsification of gun-ownership statistics in the
late Colonial period. His reporting of things like the very high cost
of a military musket, for average yoeman farmers, is true and is
well-documented elsewhere.

The _American Rifleman_ had an interesting article some years ago
about American-made guns used in the Revolutionary War. They were a
real bunch of dogs and cats, assembled from parts made all over the
world. The "ounce ball" (.69 cal. ball, larger bore) military muskets,
like the Brown Bess and the Charleville, among others, apparently were
not very common among civilians before the war. There were
smaller-bore muskets in common use near the coasts; on the frontier,
rifles were more common, in much smaller calibers. Typically they ran
from around .36 to .50 cal., although they got larger as they got
older because they had to be "freshed out" from time to time by a
gunsmith.

Other then, perhaps, shooting people what would one use a firearm that
weighed 10 lbs, was 5 feet long and fired a .69" lead ball with
doubtful accuracy, for?

If I remember correctly the "Hawkins Rifles" were maid in the .45 to
..50 range, said to be a larger caliber due to the larger Western
animals.


The Continental Army acquired more and better muskets during the
course of the war.

Yup, imported them from France and (I think) the Netherlands.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Fri, 12 Dec 2014 08:02:35 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 10:14:32 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 20:42:22 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 07:43:36 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 18:52:25 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2014 21:40:39 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:38:41 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

snip


Ed, the American Colonies had firearm control laws dating back nearly
to their establishment. The Virginia Colony banned ownership of
firearms by Negroes in 1641, The English Government banned selling or
trading firearms to Indians, in the colonies, in 1641. The
Massachusetts Bay colony banned the carrying of firearms in public
places in 1690.

Right.


The mandatory owning of a firearm by the able bodied was also
established from very early in by the Colonies, and this was very
specifically aimed at the maintaining of a Militia.

Yes, but it's unclear about how successful that was. Washington
estimated that 15% of his volunteers came without arms. As I said
above, Jefferson lamented that many Virginians had no appropriate
guns.

I don't know the answer to that, but I wouldn't make too many
assumptions.

A proper military firearm was a huge cost to a great many of the early
settlers, given that it is likely that cash money was not particularly
common and many probably evaded the purchase, if possible :-)

Several years ago Michael Bellesiles, a professor of history at Emory
University, published a book entitled "Arming America: The Origins of
a National Gun Culture", in which he discusses firearm ownership in
revolutionary America.

I recently read some excerpts from the book:

---------------------
A functional gun would cost five to six pounds, which is equivalent to
a year's wages for an unskilled laborer, about half a year's wages for
a skilled artisan.
--------------------
In the two years before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the
militia of New England frantically prepared for what they knew was
going to be a military conflict. They began stockpiling gunpowder and
purchasing firearms from Europe--ironically, even from
England--stockpiling them in the traditional centers for maintenance
of weapons, which would be town halls. On the eve of the Revolution,
Massachusetts had 21,549 guns for a province of 250,000 people. Only
the New England colonies were doing this; the rest were hopeful that
peace could be maintained.
--------------------
He goes on to say, "I was studying probate records, the most complete
record of property ownership in early America. They contain lists of
absolutely everything that a person owned--scraps of metal, broken
glasses, bent spoons, broken plows. Everything was recorded because it
was important to these families how the inheritance was going to be
divided, especially given how little property there was. I found guns
in only 10 percent of the probate records, and half of those guns were
not in working order. Since then, I've read 11,150 probate records,
samples over a 100-year period, and I have found guns in 13 percent of
the probate records. Prior to 1850, the gun is just not there.
-------------------
States kept inventories of weapons. That also was shocking to me, a
gun owner, I'd always thought the guns weren't registered. We don't
want the government to know who has guns and where. So I was surprised
to find all the governments regularly took a census of firearms. They
sent the constables door-to-door to ask, "What guns do you have? What
condition are they in?" They felt is was essential to know who had
guns, and how usable they were. There was no opposition. I wanted just
one sentence, someone who thought it was wrong. But no one in any
legislative record complained about the gun census.
------------------
We bought almost 100,000 firearms from the French and Dutch. After the
Revolution, the government made guns a priority. One of the first acts
of the new government was the creation of two armories at Harper's
Ferry and Springfield, which started to produce arms at a rate of
about 2000 a year.
------------------

Apparent reality is not (was not) what some think it was :-)

Um, as it happens, that book has been thoroughly debunked:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America

I haven't followed up to see if anyone re-researched it.

I did some additional reading and there seems to be considerable
controversy about the book. I didn't read the critiques in detail -
it's getting lat :-) - but generally they seem to be concerned with
details.

Example: In one statement the author says that "muzzle-loading
firearms were unreliable and inaccurate" and goes on to say that only
3.5% of muzzle-loading hunters bagged a deer. A critic quotes a
different year's records and demonstrates that 10.5% of muzzle-loading
hunters killed a deer. The difference appears to be the difference in
the length of the hunting season. The Author quoted a year with a
short season while the critic quotes the records from a long season.

But it probably doesn't matter as everyone has preconceived ideas and
like religion, everyone is certain that they know what is the correct
one.

Well, I try to avoid preconceived ideas and am most interested in the
facts. In this case, I haven't dug into the issue enough to know what
the facts are.

The author of that book caught a lot of hell, but the big objection
was to his apparent falsification of gun-ownership statistics in the
late Colonial period. His reporting of things like the very high cost
of a military musket, for average yoeman farmers, is true and is
well-documented elsewhere.

The _American Rifleman_ had an interesting article some years ago
about American-made guns used in the Revolutionary War. They were a
real bunch of dogs and cats, assembled from parts made all over the
world. The "ounce ball" (.69 cal. ball, larger bore) military muskets,
like the Brown Bess and the Charleville, among others, apparently were
not very common among civilians before the war. There were
smaller-bore muskets in common use near the coasts; on the frontier,
rifles were more common, in much smaller calibers. Typically they ran
from around .36 to .50 cal., although they got larger as they got
older because they had to be "freshed out" from time to time by a
gunsmith.

Other then, perhaps, shooting people what would one use a firearm that
weighed 10 lbs, was 5 feet long and fired a .69" lead ball with
doubtful accuracy, for?

The history of those things is kind of odd, in my opinion, but they
did use muskets as civilian arms.

FWIW, an article published decades ago in the Dixie Gun Works catalog,
by people who are probably very experienced at it, said that a
tight-fitting smoothbore was as accurate as a flintlock rifle out to
25 yards. A lot of deer in the East and upper Midwest are killed at
around 35 yards.

Military smoothbores were not "tight" because of the necessity of
loading rapidly with a fouled bore.


If I remember correctly the "Hawkins Rifles" were maid in the .45 to
.50 range, said to be a larger caliber due to the larger Western
animals.

Yes, in that neighborhood -- usually .50 or a little more, but some
were over .60.



The Continental Army acquired more and better muskets during the
course of the war.

Yup, imported them from France and (I think) the Netherlands.

We bought a big load of Charlevilles from France. I wonder if we ever
paid for them. g

--
Ed Huntress

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 21:26:55 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:


The _American Rifleman_ had an interesting article some years ago
about American-made guns used in the Revolutionary War. They were a
real bunch of dogs and cats, assembled from parts made all over the
world. The "ounce ball" (.69 cal. ball, larger bore) military muskets,
like the Brown Bess and the Charleville, among others, apparently were
not very common among civilians before the war. There were
smaller-bore muskets in common use near the coasts; on the frontier,
rifles were more common, in much smaller calibers. Typically they ran
from around .36 to .50 cal., although they got larger as they got
older because they had to be "freshed out" from time to time by a
gunsmith.

Other then, perhaps, shooting people what would one use a firearm that
weighed 10 lbs, was 5 feet long and fired a .69" lead ball with
doubtful accuracy, for?

The history of those things is kind of odd, in my opinion, but they
did use muskets as civilian arms.

Given the cost of a firearm in colonial times and I'm certain that if
someone had a musket he probably used it for everything.

FWIW, an article published decades ago in the Dixie Gun Works catalog,
by people who are probably very experienced at it, said that a
tight-fitting smoothbore was as accurate as a flintlock rifle out to
25 yards. A lot of deer in the East and upper Midwest are killed at
around 35 yards.

Sure. Think 12 gauge shotgun with round ball slugs. People have killed
a lot of critters with one of them.

Military smoothbores were not "tight" because of the necessity of
loading rapidly with a fouled bore.


And infantry tactics of the day were designed with that in mind. March
up to about 50 yards, present, fire and take the bayonet to 'em.


If I remember correctly the "Hawkins Rifles" were maid in the .45 to
.50 range, said to be a larger caliber due to the larger Western
animals.

Yes, in that neighborhood -- usually .50 or a little more, but some
were over .60.



The Continental Army acquired more and better muskets during the
course of the war.

Yup, imported them from France and (I think) the Netherlands.

We bought a big load of Charlevilles from France. I wonder if we ever
paid for them. g

I thought that was why old Ben was swaning around Paris :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Fri, 12 Dec 2014 18:43:37 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 21:26:55 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:


The _American Rifleman_ had an interesting article some years ago
about American-made guns used in the Revolutionary War. They were a
real bunch of dogs and cats, assembled from parts made all over the
world. The "ounce ball" (.69 cal. ball, larger bore) military muskets,
like the Brown Bess and the Charleville, among others, apparently were
not very common among civilians before the war. There were
smaller-bore muskets in common use near the coasts; on the frontier,
rifles were more common, in much smaller calibers. Typically they ran
from around .36 to .50 cal., although they got larger as they got
older because they had to be "freshed out" from time to time by a
gunsmith.

Other then, perhaps, shooting people what would one use a firearm that
weighed 10 lbs, was 5 feet long and fired a .69" lead ball with
doubtful accuracy, for?

The history of those things is kind of odd, in my opinion, but they
did use muskets as civilian arms.

Given the cost of a firearm in colonial times and I'm certain that if
someone had a musket he probably used it for everything.

FWIW, an article published decades ago in the Dixie Gun Works catalog,
by people who are probably very experienced at it, said that a
tight-fitting smoothbore was as accurate as a flintlock rifle out to
25 yards. A lot of deer in the East and upper Midwest are killed at
around 35 yards.

Sure. Think 12 gauge shotgun with round ball slugs. People have killed
a lot of critters with one of them.

Yeah. They were called "pumpkin balls" (actually, "punkin' balls")
when I was a kid in Pennsylvania. But they were about done by 1960,
replaced by rifled slugs.

I never saw the results of shooting them but they were used for that
close-range deer hunting.



Military smoothbores were not "tight" because of the necessity of
loading rapidly with a fouled bore.


And infantry tactics of the day were designed with that in mind. March
up to about 50 yards, present, fire and take the bayonet to 'em.


If I remember correctly the "Hawkins Rifles" were maid in the .45 to
.50 range, said to be a larger caliber due to the larger Western
animals.

Yes, in that neighborhood -- usually .50 or a little more, but some
were over .60.



The Continental Army acquired more and better muskets during the
course of the war.

Yup, imported them from France and (I think) the Netherlands.

We bought a big load of Charlevilles from France. I wonder if we ever
paid for them. g

I thought that was why old Ben was swaning around Paris :-)

On Thursday, December 11, 2014 10:14:37 AM UTC-5, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 20:42:22 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 07:43:36 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 18:52:25 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2014 21:40:39 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:38:41 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

snip


Ed, the American Colonies had firearm control laws dating back nearly
to their establishment. The Virginia Colony banned ownership of
firearms by Negroes in 1641, The English Government banned selling or
trading firearms to Indians, in the colonies, in 1641. The
Massachusetts Bay colony banned the carrying of firearms in public
places in 1690.

Right.


The mandatory owning of a firearm by the able bodied was also
established from very early in by the Colonies, and this was very
specifically aimed at the maintaining of a Militia.

Yes, but it's unclear about how successful that was. Washington
estimated that 15% of his volunteers came without arms. As I said
above, Jefferson lamented that many Virginians had no appropriate
guns.

I don't know the answer to that, but I wouldn't make too many
assumptions.

A proper military firearm was a huge cost to a great many of the early
settlers, given that it is likely that cash money was not particularly
common and many probably evaded the purchase, if possible :-)

Several years ago Michael Bellesiles, a professor of history at Emory
University, published a book entitled "Arming America: The Origins of
a National Gun Culture", in which he discusses firearm ownership in
revolutionary America.

I recently read some excerpts from the book:

---------------------
A functional gun would cost five to six pounds, which is equivalent to
a year's wages for an unskilled laborer, about half a year's wages for
a skilled artisan.
--------------------
In the two years before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the
militia of New England frantically prepared for what they knew was
going to be a military conflict. They began stockpiling gunpowder and
purchasing firearms from Europe--ironically, even from
England--stockpiling them in the traditional centers for maintenance
of weapons, which would be town halls. On the eve of the Revolution,
Massachusetts had 21,549 guns for a province of 250,000 people. Only
the New England colonies were doing this; the rest were hopeful that
peace could be maintained.
--------------------
He goes on to say, "I was studying probate records, the most complete
record of property ownership in early America. They contain lists of
absolutely everything that a person owned--scraps of metal, broken
glasses, bent spoons, broken plows. Everything was recorded because it
was important to these families how the inheritance was going to be
divided, especially given how little property there was. I found guns
in only 10 percent of the probate records, and half of those guns were
not in working order. Since then, I've read 11,150 probate records,
samples over a 100-year period, and I have found guns in 13 percent of
the probate records. Prior to 1850, the gun is just not there.
-------------------
States kept inventories of weapons. That also was shocking to me, a
gun owner, I'd always thought the guns weren't registered. We don't
want the government to know who has guns and where. So I was surprised
to find all the governments regularly took a census of firearms. They
sent the constables door-to-door to ask, "What guns do you have? What
condition are they in?" They felt is was essential to know who had
guns, and how usable they were. There was no opposition. I wanted just
one sentence, someone who thought it was wrong. But no one in any
legislative record complained about the gun census.
------------------
We bought almost 100,000 firearms from the French and Dutch. After the
Revolution, the government made guns a priority. One of the first acts
of the new government was the creation of two armories at Harper's
Ferry and Springfield, which started to produce arms at a rate of
about 2000 a year.
------------------

Apparent reality is not (was not) what some think it was :-)

Um, as it happens, that book has been thoroughly debunked:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America

I haven't followed up to see if anyone re-researched it.

I did some additional reading and there seems to be considerable
controversy about the book. I didn't read the critiques in detail -
it's getting lat :-) - but generally they seem to be concerned with
details.

Example: In one statement the author says that "muzzle-loading
firearms were unreliable and inaccurate" and goes on to say that only
3.5% of muzzle-loading hunters bagged a deer. A critic quotes a
different year's records and demonstrates that 10.5% of muzzle-loading
hunters killed a deer. The difference appears to be the difference in
the length of the hunting season. The Author quoted a year with a
short season while the critic quotes the records from a long season.

But it probably doesn't matter as everyone has preconceived ideas and
like religion, everyone is certain that they know what is the correct
one.

Well, I try to avoid preconceived ideas and am most interested in the
facts. In this case, I haven't dug into the issue enough to know what
the facts are.

The author of that book caught a lot of hell, but the big objection
was to his apparent falsification of gun-ownership statistics in the
late Colonial period. His reporting of things like the very high cost
of a military musket, for average yoeman farmers, is true and is
well-documented elsewhere.

The _American Rifleman_ had an interesting article some years ago
about American-made guns used in the Revolutionary War. They were a
real bunch of dogs and cats, assembled from parts made all over the
world. The "ounce ball" (.69 cal. ball, larger bore) military muskets,
like the Brown Bess and the Charleville, among others, apparently were
not very common among civilians before the war. There were
smaller-bore muskets in common use near the coasts; on the frontier,
rifles were more common, in much smaller calibers. Typically they ran
from around .36 to .50 cal., although they got larger as they got
older because they had to be "freshed out" from time to time by a
gunsmith.

The Continental Army acquired more and better muskets during the
course of the war.

Right. It was far from an insular affair. Many firearms were gotten from Englanders and other interested aristocracies their friends who switch sides or were with merchants, etc... and most of the nobility in France supported the colonists anyway.

On Fri, 12 Dec 2014 08:36:26 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Fri, 12 Dec 2014 18:43:37 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 21:26:55 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:


The _American Rifleman_ had an interesting article some years ago
about American-made guns used in the Revolutionary War. They were a
real bunch of dogs and cats, assembled from parts made all over the
world. The "ounce ball" (.69 cal. ball, larger bore) military muskets,
like the Brown Bess and the Charleville, among others, apparently were
not very common among civilians before the war. There were
smaller-bore muskets in common use near the coasts; on the frontier,
rifles were more common, in much smaller calibers. Typically they ran
from around .36 to .50 cal., although they got larger as they got
older because they had to be "freshed out" from time to time by a
gunsmith.

Other then, perhaps, shooting people what would one use a firearm that
weighed 10 lbs, was 5 feet long and fired a .69" lead ball with
doubtful accuracy, for?

The history of those things is kind of odd, in my opinion, but they
did use muskets as civilian arms.

Given the cost of a firearm in colonial times and I'm certain that if
someone had a musket he probably used it for everything.

FWIW, an article published decades ago in the Dixie Gun Works catalog,
by people who are probably very experienced at it, said that a
tight-fitting smoothbore was as accurate as a flintlock rifle out to
25 yards. A lot of deer in the East and upper Midwest are killed at
around 35 yards.

Sure. Think 12 gauge shotgun with round ball slugs. People have killed
a lot of critters with one of them.

Yeah. They were called "pumpkin balls" (actually, "punkin' balls")
when I was a kid in Pennsylvania. But they were about done by 1960,
replaced by rifled slugs.

I never saw the results of shooting them but they were used for that
close-range deer hunting.

Back when I was a kid they were fairly commonly used for deer hunting
in New Hampshire although I always suspected that it was a factor of
New England conservatism - "you already got a 12 gauge to shoot any
fox that gets around the chicken house so why do you want to buy a
special gun to shoot one deer a year?"

--
Cheers,

John B.