Interesting thought on RTKBA

[NAPOTS]

In the latest Guns & Ammo they test a couple of smooth bore rifles, one is a flint lock and one is a match lock. The designs date from the English Civil war so they predate the American Revolution by quite a bit but I expect the performance would be similar to a late 18th century British design. The smooth bores had trouble hitting a man sized silhouette at more than 25 yards. I knew smooth bores would be bad but I didn't expect they'd be that bad. You'd have been better off with a modern handgun, even if it was a single shot.

I remember from my history classes that the revolutionaries having rifled barrels was touted as a huge advantage and after seeing how bad smooth bore muskets perform I can really see why.

The left is always putting the argument out there that our founding fathers couldn't have foreseen the types of arms we'd have today and never would want civilians to own things like glocks and AR-15s. But if you think about it the rifled barrel was the pinnacle of small arms technology at the time and was even superior to what they were facing on the battlefield. It was the AR-15 of the day.

To someone who doesn't shoot and isn't familiar with firearms I wouldn't expect them to get it but to me and I am sure the rest of us there is a hell of a difference between being able to make a shot at 100 yards if you enemy can't hit the broad side of a barn at 30.

[ltorlo64]

I had not thought of that before, and it is an excellent point. I believe the British did have some rifled barrels, but not many. They hated that we would stand out of range, behind cover, and shoot their officers. That takes a rifle that is accurate vice one that just throws lead. I am starting to formulate my argument/lesson plan now.

I find that when I discuss the Constitution and especially the Second Ammendment, I spend most of my time teaching and educating people about why the Founding Fathers even thought we needed a Second Ammendment, and why they chose the wording they did. There are many people now that say that the Founding Fathers could not have meant that we could own fully automatic, or even semi-automatic firearms with large capacity magazines as they could not have known they would exist. My answer has been that they did not need to know. All the Founding Fathers needed to know was that the in order to keep the government in check, the people should be allowed to keep and bear the same weapons as the government. I have used this argument every few days in the last month and no one has been able to refute it. Normally, after I make this argument, the people drop the Constitutional discussion and go back to the emotional "if we can protect just one person" argument (which is also easily refuted).

[El Duce]

Great post. I copied it.

[LAGC]

All the Founding Fathers needed to know was that the in order to keep the government in check, the people should be allowed to keep and bear the same weapons as the government. I have used this argument every few days in the last month and no one has been able to refute it.

"Oh, but the government has A-10's and attack choppers and drones and..."

As if everyone would dutifully form up on the battlefield to get shot like they did 200 years ago. What's the government going to do, firebomb entire suburban neighborhoods to take out a few "terrorists?"

[Woogiebear]

I just had the same discussion with my supervisor this morning. He was kind of oblivious on the 2nd Amendment and I had to explain to him that its not for hunting, but for defense from a hostile party (take that as you will). We got onto the topic of firearms and I brought up something similar to what NAPOTS talked about (though w/out the comparison of the smooth vs. rifled bore, awesome by the way) and told him the 2nd Amendment holds just as true today as it did all those years ago, regardless of what firearm you lay on the table.

[ltorlo64]

"Oh, but the government has A-10's and attack choppers and drones and..."

As if everyone would dutifully form up on the battlefield to get shot like they did 200 years ago. What's the government going to do, firebomb entire suburban neighborhoods to take out a few "terrorists?"

Considering we won't do that in Iraq or Afganistan I doubt we would do it here.

While people are right that we don't have the heavy equipment the government can afford, even in third world countries it is acknowledged that you cannot win without putting "boots on the ground". That is why the Second Ammendment is so important. We don't want to put boots on the ground in countries that don't have alot of guns. Think about what the discussions between generals would be when thinking about coming here.

[El Duce]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pqFyKh-rUI

[5.56NATO]

I disagree with the notion that the founders meant we to be armed with flintlocks into perpetuity. They knew history up to their time and how weapons progressed from swords, spears and bows/arrows to firearms, cannon, and so on of their day. They knew weapons and technology in general would advance as time went on. They weren't less advanced intellectualy than people today, they were likely far smarter than the average of today. Also, back in their day, cream rose to the top of political power, today, pus does.

[Napalm281]

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution it was fine for a man to own his own warship. Privateers (Pirates) aided America in her revolution. You mean to tell me the Founding Fathers would have a problem with me owning an AK-47 today; when they were just fine with an individual owning his own warship that he/she could lay seige to a city with. I seriously doubt anyone has an AK or AR that can do as much damamge as a full blown warship from the 18th century.

[Napalm281]

P.S. I don't think they required the privateers to do a NICS or buy a class 3 tax stamp for their warship either.

[NAPOTS]

I am just tired of heard the three arguments that the left has against the 2nd. 1. Being that the founders never could have foreseen the kind of weapons we would have today. 2 That is was for hunting (they wouldn't be arms in this case, 3. That the militia refers to the states having the arms and it not being an individual right.

Our founders had just fought a WAR against an empire and won. Do you even need to ask what the intent was?

I don't think their arguments are for us. I think they are to try to convince stupid people aka, Obama voters.

[Oswald Bastable]

There are many people now that say that the Founding Fathers could not have meant that we could own fully automatic, or even semi-automatic firearms with large capacity magazines as they could not have known they would exist.

My suggested counterpoint to this argument, and the one I most often employ: "Neither could they have meant freedom of speech should apply to radio, tv and the internet. Should they be banned, just because the Founding Fathers could not have imagined them when the 1st was crafted?"

[Helen Keller]

Here's my question.

If there's all these lib-tards out there that hate guns and have money.
Why aren't folks with assault rifles robbing them by the millions??????????


Possibly they aren't as disgustingly ignorant and the one's who feel the need to talk wasting/exercising their 1st amendment rights all fucking day while making me out to be a bad guy.

[Helen Keller]

My suggested counterpoint to this argument, and the one I most often employ: "Neither could they have meant freedom of speech should apply to radio, tv and the internet. Should they be banned, just because the Founding Fathers could not have imagined them when the 1st was crafted?"


all they had back then was a Quill and an Ink well..........


HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

[Kadmos]

My answer has been that they did not need to know. All the Founding Fathers needed to know was that the in order to keep the government in check, the people should be allowed to keep and bear the same weapons as the government. I have used this argument every few days in the last month and no one has been able to refute it.

It's actually not that tough of an argument to refute, to at least some degree.

There is only one crime specifically mentioned in the Constitution, treason. And while the mention is in part to limit what may be defined as treason, it also allows punishment for treason, which strongly suggests that the founders did not intend for the people to take up arms against the government itself.

Furthermore, the Constitution also states that "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

Meaning,one may presume, that armed rebellion by the citizens. may be considered injurious to public safety, giving the government authourity to imprison, without trial,or access to writs,the citizens.

Taken together,it can be seen as reasonable strong evidence that the founders may not have provided the 2nd as a way for the citizens to rebel against the government.



Normally, after I make this argument, the people drop the Constitutional discussion and go back to the emotional "if we can protect just one person" argument (which is also easily refuted).

Yet I have found that other groups tend to accept this as a logical argument when discussing free speech, soldiers in the field, torture of prisoners, etc.

[Oswald Bastable]

all they had back then was a Quill and an Ink well..........


HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

And the printing press. That was the height of communication at the time. No way they'd have guaranteed free speech if they'd known what uses Hitler, Stalin and Mao would have made of them...would they?

:D

[davepool]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pqFyKh-rUI

My neighbor builds a modern version of that rifle, they're a bit on the spendy side at about 4 grand apiece.He's been building custom air guns for about 20 years.

It's amazing that they one that powerful back then, but what a great idea. If your gunpowder got wet you still had a rifle that would shoot a 45 caliber bullet

[Schuetzenman]

Nice post NAPots, but (nit picking alert) black powder weapons are somethign I'm super experienced with. To explain my background with them; I started building and collecting them when I was 14, belonged to the NMLRA for 21 years then dropped out due to interest in AK and AR rifles. I've got a replic 72 cal. Brown Bess, I've had Pennsylvania (a.k.a. Kentucky Long rifles), Hawken rifles, English Sporting rifles and Civil War era muskets.

The AR-15 of the Revolutionary war era was really the Brown Bess smooth bore musket due to it's high rate of fire compared to a rifle. It was capable of 4 rounds, a minute in skilled hands. The Long Rifles were lucky to get one reload done in 2 minutes. What you can call the Long Rifle is the M40 Sniper Rifle of it's day. Hitting a man sized target was very easy with a long rifle.

[NAPOTS]

Scheutz, pardon my ignorance, is the increased rate in fire due to it being easier to get the ball down the bore?

[FunkyPertwee]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the brown besses loaded with "buck and ball" so as to increase the chances of a hit? I believe the general consensus is that maximum range is 75 yards for that weapon and load combo.

[Goodman]

Many people will argue that the 2A should be held to the technology of the time it was written. A laughable stance BUT these people should be reminded that the musket and flintlock were the pinnacle of military small arms when the country was founded. Are we to believe the founders would have us armed with less than the present day military standard?

[Oswald Bastable]

Are we to believe the founders would have us armed with less than the present day military standard?

If you follow the illogic of the left and the gun control crowd, the resounding answer to that is...yes!

Irrespective of the absurdity of that claim.

[Bluntforce]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhXOuuHcjbs
10:47 to 12:12 is all that needs to be said.

[Altarboy]

I've seen old guys at rendezvous shot pretty darn well with smooth bore muskets. No long range sniping, but good enough to impress most who were there. I have a Northwest Trade Gun (Indian Trade musket) that is .62 cal and I can shoot ok with it but only ok. It sure is fun though.

[Bluntforce]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the brown besses loaded with "buck and ball" so as to increase the chances of a hit? I believe the general consensus is that maximum range is 75 yards for that weapon and load combo.

Don't know about the English but the Americans favored that load and used it from the Revolution to at least the Civil War. Some of the prepackaged ammo used by the Union on the last day of Gettysburg was Buck-n-Ball. After the charge through the artillery they had thousands of loads of .58 + 3 .32s to greet them.

[Schuetzenman]

Scheutz, pardon my ignorance, is the increased rate in fire due to it being easier to get the ball down the bore?

Yes exactly so! The fit between the .72 cal. ball and bore is loose as a Goose. There is some friction from the paper cartridge body still attached to the round otherwise it would simply fall to the bottom after the powder was dumped in and conversly if you pointed the muzzle down it would roll out onto the ground.

Loading techinque was this;
1. Grap paper cartridge from cartridge box.
2. Flip up the tail on the paper cartridge and bite with teeth, pull cartridge while clenching teeth on paper of cartridge tearing it open.
3. Flip Frizen to Half Cock position to clear access to the pan of the lock.
4. Charge the pan on the lock mechanism and close Frizen.
5. Put gun butt on the ground, invert paper cartridge over the muzzle and allow the powder to pour out.
6. Stuff paper and ball into the muzzle, draw ramrod and place over muzzle.
7. Ram down ball and paper to powder in barrel, retract ramrod and reseat in ramrod holders called Thimbols.
8. Bring musket to chest level and bring to full cock position. Point at enemy, close eyes and squeeze trigger.
Yes they did actually close their eyes just before touching it off. Now the rascally Colonials would actually aim more times than not. It sounds like a lot of steps but really you do it very quickly once you have some practice. The biting the cartridge thing is behind the dental requirements for military personnel. It was pretty hard to open a cartridge while holding the musket in your left hand and the cartridge in the right if you didn't have some teeth to grip and tear it open with.

By the Civil War era with the Rifled Muskets and the Mini Ball projectile we were still biting off the tail of the cartridge however we were not priming a pan, just putting a big winged musket cap on a nipple of the barrel. I have a Zouave Rifled musket, a repo from Italy that I did rebarrel myself when I was a barrel maker. I use to be able to get off 10 rounds in 2 minutes using vinyl cartridge bodies. These are reuseable; pour in powder stuff mini ball into them and it holds the powder in place. Speed shooting the rifled musket is frequently an event at Black Powder weapon competitions.

The Long Rifles were just the opposite in nature. The cloth patched ball fits very tightly in the bore and as such these weapons are very slow to load. Many more steps in loading the long rifle. You don't have a paper cartridge with the powder and ball assembled for loading. You have your Possibles Bag, (essentially the cartridge box) which holds a fairly good number of items. Cleaning materials, (tow cloth, unspun flax fibers) and small tools like a screw driver for changing Flints out, probably a leather pouch with cast balls in it as well as spare flints, patching material which serves as the Gas Check seal between the bore and the ball.

A Loading Block could be use to hold prepatched round balls as an assist in speeding up loading. This could be hanging by a leather lace from the strap of the Possibles Bag. A short and long peg ball starter often was used to drive the ball into the rifle bore. Some would have a strip of cloth tied to the bag by leather lace instead of a loading block. So there's two destinct methods to loading the Long Rifle. The fastest way is using the loading block with prepatched balls. Doing it that way would be like this.

1. Place butt of rifle on ground and secure it in the crook of your left arm.
2. Take the powder measure, also hanging from a strap and fill it from the horn. (Yes some would load direct from the horn to save time but that is risky business. You can't tell how much powder you're going to get in the gun that way. You could creat a squib load to a super over charge that wastes powder. The most dangerous aspect of loading out of the horn is if there is any ember in the bore left over from the last round fired it could set off the powder and essentially you have a 1Lb. gunpowder filled handgrenade at face level going off). To fill the measure you would; bite on the horn plug and pull it out, fill the measure and dump into the bore, then replug your powder horn. Also you can fill mesure, replug horn and then dump powder. I would favor fill measure, replug horn for the handgrenade reasons.
3. With powder in, center loading block over bore and use the long peg ball starter to drive the patched ball in. If not then you would drape patch cloth over the muzzle, place a ball over the bore and press in with fingers to seat it so it doesn't roll off onto the ground. Grab ball starter device and use the short peg starter to drive the ball in to a depth just below the muzzle. This techniqe then requires you to gather up the cloth in your left hand and use a Patch Knife to cut off the excess material. Return Patch Knife to sheath on strap of Possibles Bag.
4. Pull ram / cleaning rod from thimbols of rifle and seat ball firmly on powder, return rod to thimbols. Some people do maintain holding the rod in their left hand even while aiming the rifle I'd imagine. I've done this and it does speed you up a bit, saves possibly up to 10 seconds in the reloading process.
5. Bring the weapon up to chest level and bring the lock to half cock. Lower weapon to horizontal position to charge the pan out of a priming horn, a smaller horn with a finer granual size of powder, really almost the size of dust vs. a granual. Close the frizen on the pan to hold the priming in place.
6. Bring to full cock and take aim.

Additionally the best accuracy is produced from the tightest patch and ball combo, that requires cleaning either every other shot or every shot. Carbon builds up and creates a bunch of friction. Even using greased cloth patches can only go so far to overcome this friction. So a wet cleaning patch is required frequently to keep the weapon operational. To load super loose is to defeat the benefit of the rifling as the ball won't be getting any good spin put on it. This is where the hollow based Mini Ball conical projectile came through as a real upgrade in technology. It gave Rifle like accuracy with the rate of firing like that of a smoothbore Musket.

[Schuetzenman]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the brown besses loaded with "buck and ball" so as to increase the chances of a hit? I believe the general consensus is that maximum range is 75 yards for that weapon and load combo.

As was pointed out Buck n Ball was a US thing and really and primarily for smooth bore muskets. It was a much shorter range load than the Mini Ball projectile. Some units still had smooth bore muskets during the Civil War and they were the users of the B n B load. They were handicapped at distance but had an advantage up close, under 75 yards. The .32 cal. buck shot falls off quickly and disperses widely.

[Bluntforce]

Frederick The Great had every musket in the Prussian army equipped with a double-headed iron ramrod. This prevented broken rods in the case of a nervous soldier bending a rod wile pulling it out from under the barrel or while pushing the ball down. It also eliminated any complications from the ends having a different shape.

[ltorlo64]

My suggested counterpoint to this argument, and the one I most often employ: "Neither could they have meant freedom of speech should apply to radio, tv and the internet. Should they be banned, just because the Founding Fathers could not have imagined them when the 1st was crafted?"

That is not the argument that I use, but I like it. I am adding it to my arsenal.

[ltorlo64]

It's actually not that tough of an argument to refute, to at least some degree.

There is only one crime specifically mentioned in the Constitution, treason. And while the mention is in part to limit what may be defined as treason, it also allows punishment for treason, which strongly suggests that the founders did not intend for the people to take up arms against the government itself.

Furthermore, the Constitution also states that "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

Meaning,one may presume, that armed rebellion by the citizens. may be considered injurious to public safety, giving the government authourity to imprison, without trial,or access to writs,the citizens.

Taken together,it can be seen as reasonable strong evidence that the founders may not have provided the 2nd as a way for the citizens to rebel against the government.

I was not advocating rebellion and I do not think the Founding Fathers were either. They did, however, remember how England attempted to disarm the population before the War for Independence and wanted to ensure that never happened again. The Founding Fathers were doing the same thing with the Second Ammendment that they did when the created our government. They created a check and a balance. The check is not being able to disarm the populace, the balance was reminding the populace that they could not rebel without some significant legal action being taken.

[Bluntforce]

It's actually not that tough of an argument to refute, to at least some degree.

There is only one crime specifically mentioned in the Constitution, treason. And while the mention is in part to limit what may be defined as treason, it also allows punishment for treason, which strongly suggests that the founders did not intend for the people to take up arms against the government itself.

Furthermore, the Constitution also states that "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

Meaning,one may presume, that armed rebellion by the citizens. may be considered injurious to public safety, giving the government authourity to imprison, without trial,or access to writs,the citizens.

Taken together,it can be seen as reasonable strong evidence that the founders may not have provided the 2nd as a way for the citizens to rebel against the government.

The fact that Shays' Rebellion was put down before the ratification of the Constitution argues that the founding fathers were well aware of the ramifications of the Second Amendment even after demonstrating the Federal government's willingness and ability to suppress armed revolt as well as the willingness to execute the leaders of said rebellion.