Subj : Arms and the Man
To   : JIM HOLSONBACK
From : Matt Mc_Carthy
Date : Tue Feb 27 2001 05:43 pm

27 Feb 2001, 15:23, JIM HOLSONBACK (1:3618/555), wrote to ALL:

Hi JIM.

 JH> Hello, ALL.  Here is the article from The Economist, which I 
 JH> mentioned awhile back in the TECH echo.  Sorry if it gets truncated.  

No truncation here...    :-)

....

 JH> Arms and the Man
 JH> Jul 1st 1999 | WASHINGTON, DC
 JH> From The Economist print edition

 JH> America's love affair with the gun is the eternal stuff of
 JH> fiction. It has not always been the stuff of fact
....

Very interesting!  A small point that the author mentions, was that "arms" was 
not always defined as "guns".  Many old paintings of "Continental Congress" 
meetings, Philadelphia "Town Hall meetings", etc, depicted many more members 
standing with shovels, pitchforks, even plain sticks, than those with "guns".  
An angry housewife with a 'clothes iron' was probably a formidable opponent 
back then.  :-)

His description of the target 'the size of a barn door' was brought home just 
last night on the History channel here, as well as weapon maintenance and 
particularly 'discipline under fire'.  They recounted one of the major Civil 
War battles where the union troops gathered up weapons left on the field, and 
some 12,000 muskets/guns were improperly loaded, some with double balls, some 
with no powder, some with no primer, etc., all basically useless in battle.  

Having been a civilian 'shooter' in the '50s and then spending 20+ years in the 
Army, I can only begin to appreciate the 'cool discipline' necessary to 
properly load one of those old weapons _under_fire_!  

Another interesting point made was the futile efforts to get militia to arm 
themselves voluntarily!  

Perhaps that "reverse logic" would even work today; pass a law that would make 
gun ownership mandatory, and we'd probably see ownership drop, most of us being 
such 'hard-headed SOBs'...   :-)

His comments on farmers and guns rings true.  One of our summer 'tasks' in the 
'50s was to travel to a friend's uncle's farm to reduce the snake population in 
late August when the creek on his farm was drying up.  In this case, the uncle 
_did_ have a gun, an old pre-WWI relic over the fireplace mantel.  It was 
strictly decoration, and couldn't have been fired, even if he could have found 
safe ammunition for it!  We would go up there for a week every summer, and 
NEVER did he or his sons join us, as they all had tasks to perform.  No such 
thing as "leisure time" on that farm.



     M.

--- Msged/386 TE 06 (pre)
 * Origin: Matt's Hot Solder Point, New Orleans, LA (1:396/1.4)

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