Skip to main content

Half-cocked Musketry

That guy, at left, was not in the Revolutionary War, although there are probably moments, from time to time, when he wishes he had been.

He is demonstrating how a musket works.

In case you wonder, a musket works this way:

First, you shove some gunpowder down the barrel, and after it, a lead pellet wrapped in cloth or paper.
Then you pour a little powder in the pan, where a spark can ignite it.
Pulling the trigger slams a piece of flint against a piece of steel, which produces sparks, igniting the powder in the pan which, in turn, flashes through a small hole, igniting the powder in the barrel, which explosion shoves the lead shot out through the barrel.

The gun has a hammer, which has three positions:  closed, half-cocked, and cocked.  When closed, the gun is useful as a decoration, or maybe a club.  At half-cock, the gun can be loaded, but it will not fire, which is a great comfort for clumsy patriots.  Only at full cock can the musket be fired.

Got that?  You don't want to go off half-cocked.  You can't.

The Constitution of the United States says that you have a right to bear such an arm, because if the British come back and try to reclaim the country, again, we will need a militia, and a militia is a citizenry armed with muskets, ready to shoot Redcoats.

If you are a strict constructionist, then you know that the writers of the Constitution could not have been talking about semi-automatic weapons when they wrote the Second Amendment, because there was no such thing then.  There were muskets, and an occasional cannon, which was a kind of musket on wheels moved about by horses and ships.  Nobody took a cannon home to protect the wife and kids and oxen, so the Founding Fathers said nothing about the right to bear a cannon.  Or a bazooka.  Or an F-15.

I see no reason why people should not be required to demonstrate their competence at firing a musket or, for that matter, licensing and registering it.  A few muskets would undoubtedly fall into the hands of fools and fiends, but mass murders would be few and far between if the shooter had to half-cock his musket, ram powder and ball down the barrel, add a little powder to the pan, cock his weapon, and then fire again.  A fifth-grade gym teacher could handle him between shots.  Maybe hose down his powder.

If you think the Constitution should be interpreted in light of the present time, then you would have to figure out who the enemy is--the Redcoats have gone back to the British Empire, and the Empire has gone to hell in a referendum--and hardly anybody has a musket, anymore.  The Well-Regulated Militia doesn't want anybody to show up with a musket, anyway.  There are, of course, a lot of semi-automatic machine guns all around, but the Militia sure as heck isn't going to send you home with one, and the military has no way to deal with all the knock-offs in the middle of a skirmish.

It is fair, I suppose, to admit that the Constitution does not say anything about semi-automatics, or drones, but it does seem a shame to think that all it applies to is muskets and good lads with horses and a swords boots that fit either the left or the right foot.  Or neither.

It seems a shame to suggest that all we can do is interpret the Constitution literally, because then only White men counted as men, and women could not vote, but maybe that is what we ought to do, even if it makes the whole thing irrelevant for most matters.  When duty calls, we could still send militia men and muskets off to Iraq, I suppose, but it might not go well for them unless the enemy had only camels and quirts and Korans.  No chance, I think.

Of course, I suppose we could think about it.  Dig a little deeper.  Not go off half-cocked.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more