What’s interesting is that before gun powder came to the West, the Crossbow was the so-called “Assault Weapon” of its time. They were able to fire a bolt more accurately and much more powerfully than the earlier hand-drawn bow, and this power meant they were quite dangerous to armored knights who before could decimate entire villages of unarmored peasants. Just like the modern firearm’s threat to the government monopoly of force, the crossbow was often outlawed for civilian possession.
Today, because of the opponents for freedom’s fixation on “Gun Death” are largely overlooked.
A South Florida man used a crossbow to kill his wife and teenage son in their townhouse, tried to kill a second son who is a student at Florida State University and wound up dead in a motel bathroom, authorities said Wednesday.
This has a lot of angles for the “Gun Death” crowd to ignore. First they’ve been harping that we need full civilian disarmament because guns cause or exacerbate domestic violence. Of course they fixate on “Gun Death” which this also wasn’t. Further look at all the deadly implements in this story. He killed two people with the bow, then when he missed the 3rd person he attempted to strangle him. Lastly he finished himself off with a knife.
Just because they fixate on “Gun Death” don’t think these people will walk away happy with a total fantasy ban on guns. Just like the UK they will ban sporting equipment and knives as well. We need to fight them, and fight them hard, because they promise us a safe world that has never, and will never exist. What they are building is actually a prison!
H/T Bob And
Yeah, Like Prisons are really safe places
Paul in Texas
Exactly!
“[T]he Crossbow was the so-called ‘Assault Weapon’ of its time. They were able to fire a bolt more accurately and much more powerfully than the earlier hand-drawn bow, and this power meant they were quite dangerous to armored knights who before could decimate entire villages of unarmored peasants.”
The first sentence is true. The second is debatable.
The REAL advantage of the crossbow over the long bow is that anybody, with minimal training, can pick up, draw (especially with aids), load, aim, and shoot a crossbow effectively, while an English long bow (often with a draw weight pushing 180 lbs.) literally takes a lifetime – starting at a young age – to use effectively. It’s not something one can just pick up and use.
I’ve seen the firearm described as an intuitive, plug-and-play, point-and-click device that anyone can use. The invention of the crossbow in the middle ages has a lot of parallels to that.