Author: Kevin

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Sheepdogs.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about the difference between “the pack and the herd.” I think the meme got started with an essay, On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs (highly recommended, if you haven’t read it) by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman from his book On Combat, but I could be wrong about that. Glenn Reynolds expands a bit on the idea with several posts on the theme of “A pack, not a herd.”

An interesting example comes from the December, 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine – a story on the people who dropped everything and headed for New Orleans after Katrina plowed through. I covered one such story here back in September – the story of a man who loaded up his vintage military deuce-and-a-half and drove from Texas into Louisiana to do what he could to help. The Popular Mechanics piece is much the same, though on a little different scale.

One of the people covered is Mike Dillon, owner of Dillon Aero, manufacturer of mini-guns for the U.S. military and Dillon Precision, manufacturer of some of the best reloading equipment available. Mike Dillon owns a couple of helicopters, one of which is a Bell UH-1 Huey. According to the story, The Kindness of Strangers:

It’s Saturday, Sept. 3; five days ago, Hurricane Katrina broke the levees of New Orleans and tens of thousands of desperate people are still in the city, trapped at the Superdome, huddled on rooftops and dying in attics.

Suddenly, there’s a distinctive whomp-whomp that only old Hueys make; it’s Mike Dillon, swinging the helicopter he calls the Blue Ghost onto the flight line. Dillon, 70, is the president of Dillon Aero, in Scottsdale, Ariz., a company that designs and manufactures electric machine guns for the military. On Wednesday, Dillon dropped everything and flew his vintage 1968 Huey here in 16 hours. The spine of the American effort in Vietnam, the Bell UH-1 was the Army’s first turbine helicopter, and Dillon’s H model can carry about a ton, or 12 people, making it an ideal rescue vehicle. Since his arrival Dillon has been flying almost nonstop under the aegis of the Jefferson Parish sheriff’s department. “I saw the catastrophe on TV,” he says. “I had the right equipment to help and I could afford to do it. So I called a friend, a high-time ex-Vietnam helicopter pilot, to keep us out of trouble, and here we are.”

—

The Sheriff’s Department is treating the city as a war zone and so a fresh set of gunners bearing semiautomatic AR-15s with scopes climb into the Huey and buckle into webbed seats near the thumping bird’s open doors in case looters or the desperate overwhelm the helicopter. “Welcome to Dillon Air,” yells Vernon Rich, Dillon’s crew chief, a Glock 9mm pistol on his belt. Rich, 51, the owner of a precision fabrication shop in Phoenix, has built race cars, served as crew chief for former world land speed record-holder Craig Breedlove, and once tried to recover a World War II-era B-29 bomber from a frozen lake in Greenland. But he’s never seen anything like this. “Total chaos,” he says, as we rise, bank hard, and head into the city at 80 knots and 300 ft.

—

No one knows how many civilians came, but they did–in helicopters and airboats, fixed-wing airplanes and runabouts, from Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and New Orleans itself. The civilian effort represents millions of dollars in donated time, hardware, fuel and supplies. In Dillon’s case, it costs about $250 per hour to operate the Blue Ghost.

Mike Dillon’s contribution was probably on the upper end, cost-wise. He spent four days and 35 air-hours on site, not including the 32-hour round trip to and from Louisiana. Others contributed just as much time, or more however:

Two mornings later the airboats on Napoleon Avenue are lined up like charter boats. Pickups arriving from throughout the South back up hard and then hit the brakes just so. The boats slide right off their trailers. Darel Bryan, a fishing guide from Leeville, La., has already been out for hours. His airboat does not carry its usual smell of fresh redfish and black drum; it stinks of bleach from washing the decks after 14 bodies in black bags pulled from a half-submerged funeral home were piled on his bow.

Bryan’s airboat is a “big dog,” as his brother Dan puts it–26 ft., powered by a 570 big-block Chevy. The hull is Teflon coated for skimming over wet grass, on which the machine can hit 60 mph. The boats are perfect for shallow, debris-tangled waters, and airboat associations from Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and Louisiana have rallied their members. Bryan sports a ponytail and a goatee, with a lump of chewing tobacco in his cheek. Instead of bow-fishing clients, he guides sheriff’s deputies from Bernalillo County, N.M., wearing bulletproof vests and armed with AR-15s. “Right now, I don’t have a job,” he says, “or a house, either. So I might as well be here.”

—

It has now been six days since the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain broke, and except for the purr of Jimmy Delery’s 250-hp four-stroke Yamaha engine, there isn’t a sound as we idle north along Napoleon Avenue out of the Garden District in search of the last waterlogged souls clinging to their homes. The boat isn’t Delery’s; he commandeered it from somewhere. Looting, after all, is clearly in the eye of the beholder: Earlier in the day a CNN crew griped that National Guardsmen confiscated their rented boat for their own purposes; Delery took what he needed to make rescues; the poor grab food and water from neighborhood stores. Delery, a 50-year-old real estate investor, figures he’s pulled 300 people from the waters over the past few days.

But here’s the excerpt that prompted this post:

We pass a floater–a dead man lying facedown, spread-eagle on a blue mattress. “He’s been here for days,” Delery says, munching on barbecue potato chips. That’s when it hits me: Delery is happy. So were Rich and Dillon. Dedicated and selfless, yes, but deep down, these men also enjoy the all-consuming intensity of their task. It’s the unspoken theme of every war story: Calamity gives people purpose, lightens their souls and makes them feel alive.

Of course. Sheepdogs are happiest when they’re working.

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Men’s Rules.

My wife hadn’t seen this before, and when I read it to her she laughed until tears came, so I thought I’d post it here (from a thread at AR15.com). Note that all of the rules are numbered “1”.

1. Learn to work the toilet seat.

You’re a big girl. If it’s up, put it down.

We need it up, you need it down.

You don’t hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

1. Sunday sports range trips.

It’s like the full moon or the changing of the tides.

Just let it be.

1. Shopping is NOT a sport.

And no, we are never going to think of it that way.

1. Crying is blackmail.

1. Ask for what you want.

Let us be clear on this one:

Subtle hints do not work!

Strong hints do not work!

Obvious hints do not work!

Just say it!

1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.

1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it.

That’s what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a problem.

See a doctor.

1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument.

In fact, all comments become null and void after 7 days.

1. If you think you’re fat, you probably are.

Don’t ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.

1. You can either ask us to do something or tell us how you want it done.

Not both.

If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.

1. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials.

1. Christopher Columbus did not need directions and neither do we.

1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings.

Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit.

We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If it itches, it will be scratched.

We do that.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say “nothing,” we will act like nothing’s wrong.

We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

1. If you ask a question you don’t want an answer to, expect an answer you don’t want to hear.

1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine…Really.

1. Don’t ask us what we’re thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as baseball, guns and ballistics, or monster trucks.

1. You have enough clothes.

1. You have too many shoes.

1. I am in shape.

Round is a shape.

Thank you for reading this. Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the couch tonight; but did
you know men really don’t mind that? It’s like camping.

A Modest Proposal

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From President Bush’s (Illegal) Immigration Address:

Since I became President, we’ve increased funding for border security by 66 percent….

—

Tonight I’m calling on Congress to provide funding for dramatic improvements in manpower and technology at the border.

—

So we’ll increase federal funding for state and local authorities assisting the Border Patrol on targeted enforcement missions.

—

And I will ask Congress for additional funding and legal authority, so we can end “catch and release” at the southern border once and for all.

Why don’t we just pay the Mexicans on a monthly basis to go home and stay there, and cut out the middle-men?

It would slow the expansion of (already horribly bloated, ineffective) government. It would avoid the need to implement the President’s “national ID card” – which would at first be for immigrant workers, but would shortly be made mandatory for everyone. It would be cheaper in the long run. (Look at what the illegals are willing to work for, vs. bureaucrat salaries and benefits.)

And unlike the President’s recommendations, it might actually work.

And it’s welfare. The Left would have to vote in favor!

Game, Set, Match!

(I mean, hell, we’re going to dump a mountain of cash on the problem it the hopes of burying it anyway. Now that an issue has been recognized by the .gov, that is the pavlovian Congressional response.)

Enough Already

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It is my intention to do whatever I can to ensure that John McCain does not get elected to dogcatcher ever again. First, he co-sponsors the McCain-Feingold incumbent protection “campaign finance reform” bill. Then he defends it, saying,

I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government.

This, from a man who swears upon his enstatement in office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

We know now how much John McCain’s word is worth.

Then, last Saturday, John McCain spoke at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and said this:

When I was a young man, I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed, and wiser than anyone else I knew. It seemed I understood the world and the purpose of life so much more profoundly than most people. I believed that to be especially true with many of my elders, people whose only accomplishment, as far as I could tell, was that they had been born before me, and, consequently, had suffered some number of years deprived of my insights. I had opinions on everything, and I was always right. I loved to argue, and I could become understandably belligerent with people who lacked the grace and intelligence to agree with me. With my superior qualities so obvious, it was an intolerable hardship to have to suffer fools gladly. So I rarely did. All their resistance to my brilliantly conceived and cogently argued views proved was that they possessed an inferior intellect and a weaker character than God had blessed me with, and I felt it was my clear duty to so inform them. It’s a pity that there wasn’t a blogosphere then. I would have felt very much at home in the medium.

Instead, he got a little older, kept the sense of complete superiority over all other mortals, and got himself elected Senator. There he could conclude that the only accomplishment of the Founders was that they’d been born before him, too.

Still unwilling to suffer fools gladly, he could now use his elected office to dictate to those of us with inferior intellects who had put him there, and kept putting him there.

I was reminded by the Senator’s little diatribe of an excerpt from David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed on the poor state of education in Colonial Virginia:

When asked in 1671 by the Lords of Trade about the state of schools in Virginia (Governor William Berkley) made a famous reply: “I thank God,” he declared, “there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these [for a] hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, libels against the best government. God keep us from both!”

Politicians haven’t changed much, but at least Governor Berkley was appointed, not elected. Senator McCain makes a similar protest against the blogosphere – essentially, “Can no one rid me of of this troublesome priest?”

In McCain’s eyes the blogosphere is full of nothing but opinionated teenagers.

I’m 44, and I vote. I’m a blogger, and I have a voice. And if I have anything to say about it, this is McCain’s last term in elected office.

ANYBODY but McCain. He and everyone who voted for McCain-Feingold ought to be ejected from the House and Senate on grounds of violation of their oaths of office. And McCain should be tarred and feathered for good measure.

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3rd Blogiversary.

On Wednesday, May 14, 2003 I started The Smallest Minority. According to Blogger, this is my 2117th post, and according to Sitemeter, this blog has received (as of this writing) 557,464 site visits and 675,975 page views since I signed up for the service in, I think, June or July of 2003. According to Haloscan, there are over 10,000 comments archived. TSM is, according to The Truth Laid Bear, a “Large Mammal” in his “ecosystem,” curently ranked 832nd out of over 50,000 blogs tracked. Technorati ranks TSM as 10,278th out of the 39.4 million sites it tracks. Depending on how often I post, and how popular those posts are, my site traffic ranges from 450-850 hits a day (about 550 lately, since I haven’t been writing much).

At the Nation of Riflemen shoot up at Ben Avery a couple of weeks ago, a reader came up to me and said “I’ve been reading your blog for the last four years!” What I said to him was “You couldn’t have. I’ve only been posting for three.” Forgive me. I was feeling ill. What I should have said was “It only seems that long!”

I’ve met, both online and in meatspace, a lot of great people through this blog, and had hours and hours of interesting and thought-provoking (and research-provoking) discussions. And it’s provided me a place to vent, most importantly. I am pleased and somewhat humbled by the fact that there are so many people out there willing to take the time to read what I write, much less comment on it. I know that you’re busy, and I appreciate that you spend some of your busy day here.

I am also encouraged to see more and more voices like mine out there. The number of “gunbloggers” when I started was, as far as I knew, pretty small, but it has grown and grown over the last three years. We have a voice, and we’re using it. This is a good thing. And we’re being read – this is a better thing.

Anyway, the point of this post is to thank you for dropping by. I write this stuff mostly for me, but if no one read it, I doubt I’d keep it up. Like most bloggers, I experience periodic episodes of burn-out, and also like most bloggers, real life interferes from time to time. But I don’t have any plans to stop any time soon.

Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day, everybody.

Shill

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In his email to me, Professor Saul Cornell asked,

I wonder how you feel about Nelson Lund’s NRA chair at GMU law school. Would you say he is shilling for NRA?

To which I answered: “Yes.”

Dictionary.com defines “shill”:

(noun.)

One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle.

(verb)

1. To act as a shill for (a deceitful enterprise).

2. To lure (a person) into a swindle.

I must apologize to Mr. Lund.

I truly think that both Mr. Lund and Professor Cornell believe that which they profess. They are not attempting deceit as they see it. Each is professing honestly held beliefs. (At least, I hope so.)

The difference, however, is in how closely those beliefs relate to reality, and how much each person is willing to ignore or even manipulate fact in order to promote their own particular world-view.

It was this willingness to avoid or manipulate that prompted Sanford Levinson to write The Embarrassing Second Amendment. He wanted to put a spotlight on the fact that the meaning of the Second Amendment was avoided in modern law simply because it made so many people uncomfortable. He wrote:

I cannot help but suspect that the best explanation for the absence of the Second Amendment from the legal consciousness of the elite bar, including that component found in the legal academy, is derived from a mixture of sheer opposition to the idea of private ownership of guns and the perhaps subconscious fear that altogether plausible, perhaps even “winning,” interpretations of the Second Amendment would present real hurdles to those of us supporting prohibitory regulation.

Note that he included himself in that group supporting “prohibitory regulation.”

I’ve said before that I really started studying the topic of the right to arms – and, by extension, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – starting about 1995. I have stated that I had a certain understanding of that right, and in fact all of the rights protected by that document before I began that study. To some extent, my education has lead me to some conclusions I don’t particularly care for. For instance, I think state-permitted concealed-carry is historically justifiable (but prohibition of unlicensed open carry is not.) The one thing I have noted, however, is that when people actually take the time to study the topic, the conversion of opinion goes only one way: If they believe the right to arms is an individual one, their opinion is not changed. If they believe there is no individual right to arms, either they are converted to the opposite belief, however grudgingly, or their personal prejudices prevent them from doing so. But no one is converted from believing that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to an opposite conclusion. The evidence is too overwhelming.

The best example of this I know of is Professor Laurence Tribe. Professor Tribe is a professor of Law at Harvard, and is author of the textbook American Constitutional Law, which is used in (I believe) the majority of ConLaw classes in the U.S. Professor Tribe is a self-described member of the Left, and was a member of Al Gore’s legal team during the 2000 election debacle. I have absolutely no doubt about Professor Tribe’s position concerning gun control – he’s in favor of it. In the first two editions of his textbook, printed in 1978 and 1988 respectively, he relegated discussion of the Second Amendment to footnotes. But in his third edition, published in 2000, he dedicated nine pages to the topic, concluding:

Perhaps the most accurate conclusion one can reach with any confidence is that the core meaning of the Second Amendment is a populist / republican / federalism one: Its central object is to arm ‘We the People’ so that ordinary citizens can participate in the collective defense of their community and their state. But it does so not through directly protecting a right on the part of states or other collectivities, assertable by them against the federal government, to arm the populace as they see fit. Rather the amendment achieves its central purpose by assuring that the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification consistent with the authority of the states to organize their own militias. That assurance in turn is provided through recognizing a right (admittedly of uncertain scope) on the part of individuals to possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes — not a right to hunt for game, quite clearly, and certainly not a right to employ firearms to commit aggressive acts against other persons — a right that directly limits action by Congress or by the Executive Branch and may well, in addition, be among the privileges or immunities of United States citizens protected by §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment against state or local government action.

A November 1999 Wall Street Journal piece, Liberals Have Second Thoughts On the Second Amendment discusses the topic as well. (The galley prints of Prof. Tribe’s book were out by then – and were already stirring controversy.)

Mr. Tribe believes the right to bear arms is limited, subject to “reasonable regulation in the interest of public safety,” as he and Yale Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar wrote in the New York Times last month. But Mr. Tribe has written that people on both sides of the policy divide face an “inescapable tension. . . between the reading of the Second Amendment that would advance the policies they favor and the reading of the Second Amendment to which intellectual honesty, and their own theories of Constitutional interpretation, would drive them.”

Journalist Daniel Lazare, a liberal gun-control advocate, acknowledges the tension, writing in Harper’s: “The truth about the Second Amendment is something that liberals cannot bear to admit: The right wing is right.” Mr. Lazare argues for amending the Constitution to repeal the Second Amendment.

And there is the point I want to make with this piece. Daniel Lazare wrote to the WSJ in response to the piece:

Ms. Levey is right that I agree with constitutional scholars like Sanford Levinson and Laurence Tribe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. But she is wrong elsewhere.

First of all, she describes me as a liberal. In fact, I’m a socialist.
Second, she calls me a “gun-control advocate.” In fact, nowhere in my Harper’s article, “Your Constitution is Killing You,” did I specifically argue in favor of gun control; all I said, rather, is that if that is what the democratic majority wants, that is what the democratic majority should get, Second Amendment or no Second Amendment.
Third, she says that I argue in favor of “amending the Constitution to repeal the Second Amendment.” Not so: I devoted much of it to pointing out that the amending process is quite useless in this instance. Under the terms set forth in Article V, as few as 13 states representing less than 5% of the population can block any change desired by the emaining 95%. Given that no one would have any trouble drawing up a list of 13 rural states in the South or West, states for whom repealing the Second Amendment would be akin to repealing the four Gospels, the amendment is, under anything like present conditions, invulnerable. Even though polls indicate that a majority of Americans do not want an individual right to bear arms, a Constitution made in the name of the people says that is what the people must have whether they like it or not.
This is anything but democratic. Rather than amending the Constitution, my position is that we should toss this antiquated document and create a new plan of government from scratch, this time one based on strict majority rule.

Daniel Lazare
New York

There is an honest man. A fucking socialist, but an honest man.

Which, in my humble opinion, Professor Saul Cornell is not. (Honest, not socialist – though he might be that as well.) He is at best a self-deluded man. He twists logic, consciously or unconsciously, to justify a position that cannot be reasonably held by someone willing to look reality squarely in the face. As I said to him previously:

You, an historian, have taken it upon yourself to distort history – something that you yourself claim is unacceptable. You claim that the Justice department’s recognition of the “standard model” of the Second Amendment is somehow “well beyond” a “living document” re-interpretation. I’m sorry, Professor, but if you actually believe that you’re delusional, and if you know better you’re a bald-faced liar. I honestly cannot tell which.

And I can’t.

But it doesn’t really matter. He’s working willingly for the Joyce Foundation – a group dedicated to, among other things, disarming Americans. David Hardy has an interesting post from April of last year concerning the Professor, his association with the Joyce Foundation, and a symposium put on by Fordham University. Hardy notes:

You must, of course, apply to Joyce for a grant. And its standards make it clear that the project — or in this case law review — is expected to advance the enactment of gun legislation (buzzword = “policy”).

The Gun Violence Program supports efforts to bring the firearms industry under comprehensive consumer product health and safety oversight as the most promising long-term strategy for reducing deaths and injuries from handguns and other firearms.
Program priorities are:
• Supporting state-based policy initiatives in Illinois and Wisconsin that can achieve meaningful reforms and provide a model for gun policy nationwide ….
• Supporting focused research to inform state policy efforts.

From its grant FAQ,

Do you fund educational programs in violence prevention? We generally do not fund such programs.
….
Do you fund research? We fund research that is likely to have a strong impact on public policy.
…..
Please tell me more about your focus on public policy. We focus our grantmaking on initiatives that promise to have an influence on public policies. That includes advancing the public debate about important policy issues, most notably the need for federal consumer product health and safety standards for the firearm industry. We believe such policy initiatives can lead to broad, systemic changes that affect the most people over the long run.

In other words: don’t come to us with a law review that will explore the Second Amendment. Come to us with an idea for one that will help enact gun laws. That is what we fund.

Now, I’m sure the professor would point out that Nelson Lund is under similar restrictions regarding NRA funding – they don’t support anti-gun research, either.

But the NRA isn’t trying to swindle Americans out of their Constitutionally guaranteed rights.

And that IS a difference.

UPDATE, 5/15: I sent an email to Prof. Lund with a link to this piece. He responds:

Mr. Baker–

Thanks for your message and consideration. I took a quick look at the web page to which you provided a link, and feel that I should point out that it is incorrect to say that “Nelson Lund is under similar restrictions regarding NRA funding – they don’t support anti-gun research, either.” My academic work is under no such restrictions. The dean of my law school has designated me the Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment. I do not answer to the donor, any more than hundreds or thousands of other holders of named professorships in this country answer to those who donated funds to establish the chairs. Nor has my dean ever so much as suggested that I am under any obligation to conform my views or the results of my research to the preferences, presumed or expressed, of the donor that provided funds for the professorship to which I was named. In short, I am perfectly free to publish “anti-gun research” if that is where the search for truth leads me, and I do not believe I would suffer any financial penalty of any sort if I did so.

If you could find a way to alert your readers to these facts, I would be grateful.

Nelson Lund

Consider it done.

Prof. Cornell Responds!

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I’ll give him credit for that, anyway. Here is his email in its entirety:

Kevin,

Thanks for the e-mail. I wonder how you feel about Nelson Lund’s NRA chair at GMU law school. Would you say he is shilling for NRA? Any way, I am in the midst of grading essays so I can’t respond to all of the errors in your blog. I think you confuse laws aimed at preventing slave revolts and the infamous Black Codes enacted after the Civil War, with earlier laws aimed at reducing gun violence. I agree with you that Tucker is quite important, but I fear you have taken his writings out of context. Tucker’s primary concern is with the danger posed by disarmament of the militias during the Alien and Sedition Crisis, not an individual right of self defense. The latter right was well established under common law and Federalists showed no interest in enacting laws that might impact this right. What Tucker wished to guard was the right of citizens to keep and bear arms in state controlled militias. In this sense, this aspect of Tucker’s thought does not fit either of the modern theories of the Second Amendment. I suggest you read my forthcoming book on the subject. You will find quite a few surprises in it.

In regard to Mr. Lund, the answer is “yes.” Like yourself, Professor, I’m certain Mr. Lund believes what he says, but I also believe he wouldn’t be sitting in an NRA-endowed chair if he wasn’t aligned with the NRA’s agenda.

I’ve taken Tucker out of context? I quoted, so far as I know, the entire passage concerning Tucker’s understanding of the Second Amendment. I find it difficult to believe I have misinterpreted Tucker when he says “The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible,” and “Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.”

He’s talking about the individual rights of possession and self-defense, and organized defense against tyrannical government. What part did I get wrong? And are you not championing “robust regulation” – by government – up to and including “broad-scale prohibition?” The very thing Tucker decried? Sorry Professor, but that’s more pretzel-logic.

After your book comes out, I’ll see if I can pick one up on the used market. I’m sure it will be as fascinating and fact-filled as Michael Bellesiles’ Arming America.