The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 2 of 10)

Mr. VerBruggen, you are reaching just a bit with "The Act required militiamen to acquire weapons that were in common circulation and that individual men would be able to employ, such as muskets, rifles, pistols, sabres, hangers, etc., but not cumbersome, expensive, or rare equipment such as cannons" as a justification for excluding automatic weapons from Constitutional protections. I would remind you of two facts.

First, there were no typewriters, word processors or PCs that could spit out millions of lies and falsehoods a second in 1789 but no one is calming that speech produced by such rapid fire WMD aren't protected under the First Amendment, are they? Exclude John McCain from that thought for this purpose.

Second, what was the purpose of having every able bodied male to have "weapons that were in common circulation" back in 1789? To attend a picnic or go on parades with? Can you tell the difference between a smooth bore Brown Bess musket used by the Colonists and British vs. the civilian version back then? Was there a battlefield difference between military and civilian weapons back then? Most Colonists' weapons were better in ways that mattered. How about the difference between a semi-automatic version of an M-16 and the full automatic "machine gun" version of same? I can assure you that only fools and Hollywood Action Heroes take modern civilian weapons up against the real military weapons ("machine guns -- aka Assault rifles") all else equal and come out on top.

Stop reaching Mr. VerBruggen. The modern pistol is more effective than that 1789 Brown Bess musket but the "weapons in common circulation" by civilians today are quite a bit down the effectiveness scale from the average military weapon "in common circulation and that individual men would be able to employ" against the masses.

p>You are right, the Bush Administration's argument is stupid. You didn't help the matter if the original intent is to have meaning as it did in 1789. br> -- Thom Bateman br> Newport News, Virginia /p> p> One can only wonder why after a sterling record of supporting the Second Amendment and reversing the Reagan and Clinton era gun control legislation the Bush administration has entered the DC case with such convoluted arguments that condemn the unconstitutional DC law, but urge the court not to sweep aside such nonsense? Pandering to the Brady's and other anti-Constitutional fascists didn't win friends for Ronald Reagan and it won't win them for George W. Bush. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will not only throw out the DC travesty, but secure the sanctity of the Second Amendment as our forefathers envisioned -- a free people are a people with the right to arm and protect themselves. br> -- Michael Tomlinson /p>

You should do a better job researching the mechanics, physics, history, and law of firearms. Some glaring inaccuracies:

1. The mechanism of an M-16 does not differ much from a common semi-automatic. Indeed, with a minor modification, many semi-automatics can be converted to full automatic. In point of fact, the mechanism of the common .22 auto and the less common sub-machine gun is almost identical.

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