Potato - Potatoh

I'm not making this up, ask anybody who knows about this stuff and they will tell you that the National Guard now fills the role that used to be played by the state militias. Personally, I'd rather they had stuck with the militias, but the transition happened before I was born and I was not consulted. My problem with the National guard is that it's too damn national. The militias were primarily a state army although, since they could be called into national service, I suppose it doesn't make that much difference. I just like the idea of each state having its own army.

The Founding Fathers didn't say anything about the anti-gun people because there weren't any anti-gun people in those days. There were the Quakers, but they were generally anti-war, not specifically anti-gun. I think they would have been against any war, even if it was fought with swords or pitchforks, but I don't think they wanted the government to confiscate all the guns, swords, and pitchforks.

There were no condos in Jefferson's time either, but I think you're right that being a yeoman had more to do with owning agricultural land than it did with home ownership. In those days the majority of people were farmers, and the difference between a yeoman and a peasant was that a yeoman owned the land that he worked on, while the peasants were tenant farmers. An aristocrat owned land and had other people to work it for him, while the yeomen were basically family farmers. I think that being a yeoman had more to it than that, though. The peasants owed allegiance to their landlord, and most aristocrats owed allegiance to another aristocrat. The yeoman might have owed allegiance to the king or emperor but, other than that, he was his own boss. A yeoman might hire himself out to an aristocrat, like a contractor, but he was under no obligation to do so.

I agree with you that we gun nuts only use the constitution to reinforce our position. If the constitution was legally amended to prohibit gun ownership, we probably wouldn't support it any more than the drinkers supported the Prohibition Amendment.

As far as that "rule of law v rule of men" thing goes, I think you've summed it up pretty well. We have the rule of law, but the laws are made and administered by men, or persons to be more politically correct. The only difference is that, if we didn't have the rule of law at all, the person in charge could do anything they wanted to, and there would be no way to hold them accountable.

I've been meaning to ask you something about the "theory v practice thing". If the theory is that you do the greatest good for the greatest number, how do you determine what is the greatest good for the greatest number? Different people want different things, and they don't always want what's good for them, or what you or I think is good for them. Majority rule is better than nothing, but it's far from perfect. If 51% of the people are in favor or your proposal, that means that 49% are opposed to it. If the minority is sufficiently opposed, the majority is going to have a hard time cramming it down their throats.

We already have laws that prohibit civilians from possessing machine guns, bazookas, and atomic bombs. These laws have been on the books for a long time, and most people don't have a problem with them. The controversy arises over the so-called "assault rifles", which we gun nuts prefer to call "tactical rifles". They were originally developed for the military, but modified versions have become quite popular in the sporting world. Indeed, the recent controversy has made tactical rifles more popular than ever, since Obama was first elected they have been flying off the shelves. There are so many of them out there now, I think you would have a hard time stuffing that cat back into the bag.