Bless the Wall Street Journal, and nice letter Ms. Holtz. So there ARE some sane people left in Taxachussets after all...
For what? For the use of the army, or just to disarm them?
...Such, in its weak points, was the American army: but it had merits even more peculiar than its imperfections; and those imperfections care and time might remedy, while its more valuable attributes were of a kind no mere military training could create. In many of the infantry regiments two companies, out of every ten, were armed with rifles (as opposed to smooth bore muskets. comment mine);and from almost every homestead along the western border came a backwoodsman carrying a weapon which was the pride of his eyes and a main impliment in his industry.
...All of these appliances were of the very best; because the sustenance of the family, and, (when the indians were about) its existence and its honour, depended upon straight shooting. A boy of the wilderness, at an age when in England he would have been scaring crows, was sent to kill squirrels, under penalty in case the number of squirrels did not tally with the number of bullets he expended. So soon as he passed his twelfth borthday, he was recognized as a part of the garrison of the farm, and was alloted his loophole in the stockade which encircled it. In the more settled districts, many of which were wild enough, the country folk spared no pains to keep up with the standard of marksmanship that ruled among their grandfathers when their township was still a frontier district.
But... but...Bellesiles is the modern Galileo!
Forget the Bambino -- there's your Beantown Curse.