Posted on 10/11/2003 3:25:35 PM PDT by quidnunc
Unlike most of the world's people, many Americans view the possession of firearms as the norm rather than the exception.
The European and Japanese feudal aristocracies loathed firearms, because they eliminated the role of the nobility in combat. Firearms democratized warfare, penetrated armor, and allowed fighting from a distance, thereby greatly reducing the importance of the nobility's old skills with swords in close combat. In Japan and much of Europe, the aristocracy promoted laws restricting or prohibiting the possession of firearms, especially handguns, by common people.
In continental Europe and England, hunting was tightly controlled by the aristocracy. Common people were often forbidden even to kill a rabbit that was eating their crops on their own land. No sane governor or legislature in the American colonies would have attempted to impose European-style hunting or gun-control laws, for such repressive laws would have made it impossible for much of the American population to survive.
Colonial laws generally required each household to possess a firearm, for service in the militia and other civil defense. Households that could not afford a gun were often given "public arms" by the government to keep at home.
Other English colonies did not have as rough a frontier as the United States did. Canada's white settlement was mostly peaceful, thanks to careful government negotiations with the indigenous peoples. Nor did Canada have a "Wild West" like the United States, where citizens ubiquitously carried handguns for protection, in the absence of effective law enforcement. In Canada, though, the Mounted Police showed up when the first railroad towns were being built. Order was imposed from above.
The American Revolution was in part assisted by America's already well-developed gun culture. The United States won independence through a sustained armed popular revolt, as the Swiss (armed with crossbows) had done beginning in 1291, when the first three cantons battled for freedom from Austria.
Of the approximately 400,000 American men in active service against Great Britain during the Revolution, the militia amounted to about 165,000. Although the militiamen turned in some miserable performances, such as when those from Virginia fled at Camden, South Carolina, in 1780, the irregular forces, when supported by the Continental Army, could fight effectively. For example, they did splendidly in the 1781 Battle of Cowpens, South Carolina — the turning point of the war in the South — which set the stage for the coup de grace at Yorktown, Virginia.
The militia played a major role in defeating Gen. John Burgoyne's 1777 Saratoga campaign, which had tried to isolate New England from the rest of the United States. In 1778–79, the Kentucky militia, led by George Rogers Clark, captured key British posts on the Wabash River in the future states of Indiana and Illinois. The victories helped legitimize America's claim to all British territory east of the Mississippi, a claim that Britain eventually recognized in the 1783 peace treaty.
In Washington's Partisan War: 1775–1783 , Mark W. Kwasny examines George Washington's use of the militias in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. The scholar writes that while those forces could not by themselves defeat the Redcoats in a pitched battle, the irregulars were essential to American success: "Militiamen were available everywhere and could respond to sudden attacks and invasions often faster than the army could." Washington "used them in small parties to harass and raid the army and to guard all the places he could not send Continentals."
As the war came to an end, Washington wrote in his 1783 "Circular to the States" : "The Militia of this Country must be considered as the Palladium of our security, and the first effectual resort in case of hostility."
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(Excerpt) Read more at davekopel.org ...
IronJack's First Law of Gun Control: Where elitism flourishes, gun control is strictest.
Maybe...or maybe it just means they target you specifically and make sure to come when you're not home so they can get your guns. OR, if they know you're ready, they'll be sure to enter "HOT" because the surprise factor favors them.
I have gun stuff on my minivan because that makes a potential encounter on the road a much dicier proposition and it has worked for me on quite a few hairy situations while vacationing in rural and remote areas, but I leave the "Property Protected by Smith and Wesson" placards off my home! I usually back my car into the driveway so those car decals aren't so readily visible.
I understand what he means, but can't hurt to clarify that this sounds a bit like getting the cart before the horse. It's my understanding that the USSR also had a pleasant-sounding list of rights in their constitution. Let's not forget that our Bill of Rights was originally meant as a restriction on Congress.
I suggest as a better starting point for "rights consciousness":
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