(November 2, 2017 at 3:46 pm)Minimalist Wrote: You also could not attach a bayonet to a rifle.We tried the bayonet thing once. It was ... fun.
The gun nuts will shriek as if their balls were on fire but who cares?
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/09/10/re...illot.html
Quote:In the Colonial period, the gun meant the musket, an imported item that cost the equivalent of two months pay for a skilled artisan. Without constant attention its iron rusted, and blacksmiths were ill equipped to repair it (they shoed horses and made plows). The musket was not efficient for self-defense or hunting. It was not accurate beyond a few hundred feet (it had no sight, and soldiers were instructed not to aim, since volleys relied on mass impact). It frequently misfired and was cumbersome to reload, awkward qualities for individual self-defense; by the time you had put ball and powder back in, your foe would be upon you with knife, club or ax. Most murders were committed with knives, and -- contrary to the myth of primitive violence -- there were few murders outside Indian warfare (in North Carolina, on the average, there was only one murder every two years between 1663 and 1740).
I once saw an estimate that an actual rifle would have cost roughly $35 in 1775... which in today's terms would be nearly $1,100. You didn't buy one unless a)
you were a rich motherfucker or b) you really needed it to hunt with. Most Americans were farmers.
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Current time: April 27, 2024, 10:17 pm
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All Hail the Second Amendment
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