Gun Ownership. Confiscation, and Regulation

 

I found this on-line, of course:

          However, we don't live in Turkey, Russia, China, Cambodia, Guatemala, or Uganda; we live in the United States of America where none of these things has ever happened (except to the American Indians), but where all kinds of mass murders have taken place by people who misuse firearms and explosives.

          Don't mistake what I am saying because I have owned a gun since I was a teen-ager and walked alone, without even my parents’ knowledge, into my hometown hardware store to purchase a Mossberg .22 which I used in competition as a member of the National Rifle Association and of my high school rifle team. Times change. There is nothing wrong with reasonable gun CONTROL, which the government of the Ameriican British colonies has been doing for nearly 400 years. This is history, and anyone can verify it by recourse to the Internet:

          On 22 March of 1631 the colonial government of Massachusetts Bay enacted the first military legislation in North America requiring that all adult males (except ministers and magistrates) had to own arms and therefore constituted the militia which could be called upon in any emergency to defend the towns and villages of the colony (http://www.history.army.mil/reference/mamil/MAMIL.HTM). 

          (The requirement that all able-bodied males needed to own a gun was in effect a form of taxation, which raises a different question about “Obamacare” and a recent Supreme Court decision, but I digress).

          NOTA BENE: Adult male citizens of Massachusetts Bay Colony were required by the government to purchase their own firearms if they could afford them; those arms had to be registered with the government so that, for one thing, the government during emergency situations could confiscate the arms of infirm or elderly owners of guns who could not serve in the militia, and those arms would then be furnished to able-bodied but non-gun-owning members of the militia. Otherwise, towns were required to furnish arms to adult males who couldn’t afford them and later collect the costs of those arms through taxation, which was called “raising a rate.” 

          I don’t know what the context of Senator Feinstein’s remark was, but it is no doubt true that “Criminals prefer unarmed victims, and dictators prefer unarmed citizens.” One might add, “But movie audiences prefer armed crazies to be on-screen only.” It has been the American government's duty since 1631 to regulate firearms.