You gotta love the arrogance of the anti-freedom types. They can do a national broadcast like this that obviously he has done no research on, and decide that his feelings are truth.
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First MASSIVE mistake.
A) The Militia is NOT the National Guard! And further to say that somehow members of the US Military have the right to keep and bear arms is just as foolish. Does he think that all the trained US Soldiers who were gunned down in Fort Hood simply decided that a rifle or pistol was simply too heavy that day? No! They were NOT ALLOWED to keep and bear arms while on base unless specifically designated by orders.
This is like saying slaves or prisoners are free….they just WANT to be sitting in that cell, or working in that field.
B) “Inaccurate”? It seems Lawrence thinks there was only one gun in existence in 1776, and that was the Brown Bess Musket. Yeah the smooth-bore musket could really only be accurate at glorified handgun ranges…still we had guns like the Kentucky Rifle which was used for both utilitarian things like pest control and hunting, but also for military sharpshooters. The musket was vastly faster to load, so people accepted the compromise in accuracy for speed of fire.
C) Let’s talk speed of fire! Two guns that came to mind that were contemporary to the 2nd Amendment drafting. This repeating Air Rifle that fed from a 20 round tubular magazine, and the Puckle Gun which was one of the first rapid-fire arms of the time.
The smugness really comes from O’Donnel’s idea that the founding Fathers assumed the world would ALWAYS be like 1776. Ironic given that we’re watching a national TV broadcast over the internet.
This is like saying that in the 80s we could never conceive a cellular telephone that could fit in a pocket! Or that it might have multimedia capabilities.
Or maybe my GRANDPARENTS were thinking that when they read Dick Tracy in the news papers.
The idea that somehow the founding fathers couldn’t conceive that a rifle like the AR-15 (which itself is over 50 years old, and builds off of technology over 100 years old) would ever exist, even when very crude guns with aspects of its function existed at the time.
Of course he also claims that the Militia is the National Guard, and if you’re an active duty serviceman or woman you somehow have rights pertaining to your issue gun(s) is a pretty loaded bill of goods, given that six seconds on the internet (that the founding Fathers NEVER could have imagined….so maybe it should be banned?) can prove false.
Hey but if he says it we should believe it, right? These are the people demanding we give our freedom to them!
No thanks!
Definitely my favorite part of the Puckle Gun entry:
Puckle demonstrated two versions of the basic design: one, intended for use against Christian enemies, fired conventional round bullets, while the second variant, designed to be used against the Muslim Turks, fired square bullets. The square bullets were considered to be more damaging. They would, according to the patent, convince the Turks of the “benefits of Christian civilization.” The square bullets, however, were discontinued due to their unpredictable flight pattern.
Yeah that part is FUNNY. Of course that won’t work for crap. Of course somebody (Is it Winchester?) is making a shotshell that is full of polyhedral shot pellets. I suspect they’ll fly a LOT better than squares.
If we had access to dodecahedron 00 buckshot made of depleted uranium, their heads would spin like a Duncan top. (a Duncan that was off-balance and wobbles as soon as it’s thrown, not that we’d notice the difference)
Revisionist History at Work.
Nothing to See, Move Along….
“The smugness really comes from O’Donnel’s idea that the founding Fathers assumed the world would ALWAYS be like 1776.”
Yep. The left always focuses on the Constitution being about ‘things’, when it’s truly about human nature, which is invariable. Of course, that’s in concert with the leftist notion that people can be made better ( so long as they get to do the ‘making’), so no real surprise there.
It is rather curious that the advocates of a “living Constitution” never-the-less think the Founders considered the world unchanging in other ways.
I love how people assume that, just because a particular technology is not, at a given time, practical, means that bright people in those times and places cannot imagine them and feel they are achieveable. Like heavier than air craft, powered submersibles, wireless communications, etc.
Hell, I recall reading how the Continental Congress (well BEFORE the Constitution and Bill of Rights) was funding an inventor who claimed he could produce repeating, fully automatic, and (allegedly) selective fire muskets. Little or no details were available as to the tech, and no practical examples were produced, but it sounds like a stacked charge concept, akin to a mechanically fired MetalStorm. (Not sure how selective fire would have been achieved, other than a driving spring powerful enough to slide the lockwork back AND recock at each station, but hey, cool idea.) Hell, Franklin proposed vertical envelopment over a century before the tech could have produced even practical powered lighter than air craft for air landing ops, much less true airborne assault.
Just like our society today couldn’t possibly envision the phasers, ray guns, phased plasma rifles with 40 watt range, Wave Motion Guns, Death Stars, “smart guns”, that we keep envisioning for Science fiction novels and movies. These obviously should be banned when they become real, because we couldn’t think up them…
By the way, Weerd, I love your point about the Foot Hood soldiers having their rights violated under the collective 2A interpretation. That is a great line to throw back at the antis. What exactly does the collective right actually protect? They can only bear arms under order, and they certainly can’t keep them, so where is the right? I am going to throw this at Laci sometime, which I am sure he won’t answer. It is not like he is going to argue that our soldier’s rights are being violated.
Please do! The “Collective Right” side doesn’t exist at all, and also shows that there is really no such thing as a “Collective Right” given that its just others telling you what to do.
A cop or soldier doesn’t have a right to NOT carry a gun if they don’t want to, nor do they have the right when their superiors ask them to be disarmed.
Seems the polar opposite of rights
Also feel free to drop this on Laci’s maggoty lap, he seems to be in a bit of maggoty phase as of lately.
The murder in London today is a prime example of why the 2nd exists.
+1 on Les… sigh
Hey, isn’t this the same guy who said the NRA was “In the business of helping terrorists get away with their attacks?” Why hasn’t he been sued for slander and/or locked up for defamation?
What a f^*%ing arrogant idiot! Thinks he’s all that, and nowhere near smart enough to speak on this subject.
Who is it that is rewriting things again?
Good fisk, Weerd!