"As seen from the discussion above, “warlike weapons” were not the same as the weapons an individual would normally carry for personal self-defense, or use to defend one’s home against an intruder. These were battlefield weapons."
Of all the disingenuous points in this weak attempt at a rebuttal, this one is far and away the most offensively stupid. There was absolutely zero difference between "battlefield weapons" and "the weapons an individual would normally carry for personal self-defense, or use to defend one's home against an intruder" until the last few decades of the 20th century.
During the Framing era, the Brown Bess musket and the Kentucky long rifle were both standard-issue military and common-use civilian weapons. This state of affairs persisted for nearly two centuries: through the Civil War (percussion muskets and revolvers), western expansion (lever-action repeating rifles and revolvers), World War One (bolt-action rifles, revolvers, and, increasingly, semi-auto pistols), World War Two (semi-auto rifles and pistols -- CMP sold millions of surplus Garands to civilians following the war), and Korea (same). It wasn't until the 1960s, when standard-issue military rifles started to become capable of fully-automatic and burst fire modes, that there was any meaningful difference between "military" and "civilian" weapons -- and even then, civilians bought (and continue to buy) millions of crippleware semi-auto versions of the military rifles (since, to the surprise of exactly nobody except pig-ignorant gun control advocates who barely know which end of a firearm is the shooty part, the same features that make a firearm good for killing enemy soldiers on a battlefield also make it good for killing the kinds of lawless goblins that a civilian might sometimes encounter).
The idea that Pomeroy, writing in 1888, would have made the slightest distinction between the "military" and "civilian" weapons of the day is completely preposterous, BECAUSE THEY WERE THE SAME WEAPONS (i.e., breech-loading rifles and single-action revolvers).
If everything you think you know about history comes from listening to hacks like Saul Cornell, you're woefully out of your depth.
In reply to Kostas Moros regarding your twitter thread (was easier to post here rather than as an insanely long Twitter thread as I don't have Twitter Blue):
To address some of the points from Moros’ reply.
Before 1. No misunderstanding as far as I can tell. The point of the article is that Moros badly mauled the interpretation of his sources, which I happily stand by (even after his response).
Under 1. It is completely legitimate to point out the Court’s arbitrary and artificial beginning and end dates for what constitutes evidence, and to also point out that several of your sources are outside the Court’s dates. Also, what the Court found regarding sources was obviously false, as the dissent and dozens of articles and books have shown before and since then.
Under 2. It’s not at all obvious to me what Moros would consider a collective right, or given his constant shifting of goal posts whether he could even provide an example of what it would look like in practice. A militia is comprised of individuals. No duh. No one has argued otherwise as far as I know. That basic fact does not mean all talk of an individual “bearing arms” in a militia automatically constitutes an “individual right.” Several times in his thread Moros seems to argue this. I hope that is not actually the intended argument, as that would be an irrelevant and silly word game.
For us, this is simple: is the source talking about militia service, or is it about using guns outside the context of militia service (personal self-defense, hunting, etc.)? If it is talking about militia service, then that is evidence for the militia point of view. If it is talking about personal self-defense, hunting, target shootings, etc., score a point for the individual rights point of view. And despite what Moros claims, most of the sources he selected are explicitly talking about the militia, and when they do mention something about arms outside of the militia they give a stamp of approval to laws that if were in practice today would horrify Moros.
Further, it is not clear that Moros himself really grasps natural rights philosophy and/or Locke. There is natural law, constitutional law, and common law. These are different things. Yes they interact and influence each other, but they are separate. Also, there is still substantial philosophical work being done over natural rights. It is obviously not as simple as “right to self-defense trumps everything else.”
And it is clear that Moros hasn’t thought through the pivot to natural rights. What else denies the right to “LIFE, liberty, and property”? Gun violence. If we care at all about those natural rights, finding ways to prevent them from being violated is an obvious government interest, and why we live in a society with a social contract and not an anarchic state of nature.
Further on natural rights, I personally don’t think a modern society should be trapped with an archaic interpretation of natural rights that saw slavery, genocide, and disenfranchising women as compatible with what Locke’s framework holds dear, but I guess Moros disagrees.
Also, defending one’s life and gun ownership are two distinct things. The idea that without a gun someone is defenseless is completely false. Life is a natural right. Incorrectly feeling safer is not.
Under 3. Would agree that Twitter is dumb.
For the individual source points, I will just address a couple. First, this comment: “No reason except all the other writers saying the same thing in the years to come, the fact that the federal government passed no gun laws until the 20th century, and the fact that no state banned or even moderately restricted peaceable citizens owning guns.” Moros is either knowingly lying or is incredibly incompetent here. Moros should know full well that the Federal government passed gun laws in territories where it felt it actually had jurisdiction and a need to do so. This article goes into detail about the laws and why the Bruen court branding them as “outliers” is patently dishonest. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/2022/08/territorial-gun-regulation-and-the-lost-history-of-the-federal-second-amendment/
In another comment, Moros states: “Yet he {Stevenson} offers NO EVIDENCE that his collective right view had any level of significant support.” This is simply a lie, even according to Moros several paragraphs back. Some the sources Moros cites support a collective right, as he admits in a couple places. Saying there is no historical evidence Stevenson has cited to show significant support for the collective view point is easily disproven by reading anything Stevenson has written.
On a final note: If as Moros says that the “right to keep and bear arms” is obviously about an individual right instead of a collective right, then we would see later states just copy and paste that language to signal the inclusion of such a right in their own constitutions. Instead, we see the exact opposite. A large percentage of states explicitly include “for the defense of self” or similar language.
Why would they do this if the individual rights framework was obvious in the original 2A? It is a completely incoherent view of history. What is more likely, that all of these states constitutional conventions were led by people who loved repeating themselves unnecessarily, or that Moros is wrong about how the amendment was seen at the time? Obviously, the latter.
In reply to BC: This isn't a remotely serious comment. If you think you could show up to a militia training day armed with your fowling piece, derringer, pepperbox, and Arkansas toothpick and receive anything other than laughs of derision from your comrades and outrage from the commanding officer, you are sadly mistaken.
Similarly, if you think people were regularly carrying their Brown Bess or Kentucky long rifle around town on a daily basis in case they needed to shoot a "lawless goblin," your problem isn't just with Saul Cornell, but any rational historical analysis.
Further, multiple commentators from the time made a distinction between "warlike" weapons and other weapons. If they didn't think there was a distinction, those commentators from the time wouldn't have used the word "warlike."
"As seen from the discussion above, “warlike weapons” were not the same as the weapons an individual would normally carry for personal self-defense, or use to defend one’s home against an intruder. These were battlefield weapons."
Of all the disingenuous points in this weak attempt at a rebuttal, this one is far and away the most offensively stupid. There was absolutely zero difference between "battlefield weapons" and "the weapons an individual would normally carry for personal self-defense, or use to defend one's home against an intruder" until the last few decades of the 20th century.
During the Framing era, the Brown Bess musket and the Kentucky long rifle were both standard-issue military and common-use civilian weapons. This state of affairs persisted for nearly two centuries: through the Civil War (percussion muskets and revolvers), western expansion (lever-action repeating rifles and revolvers), World War One (bolt-action rifles, revolvers, and, increasingly, semi-auto pistols), World War Two (semi-auto rifles and pistols -- CMP sold millions of surplus Garands to civilians following the war), and Korea (same). It wasn't until the 1960s, when standard-issue military rifles started to become capable of fully-automatic and burst fire modes, that there was any meaningful difference between "military" and "civilian" weapons -- and even then, civilians bought (and continue to buy) millions of crippleware semi-auto versions of the military rifles (since, to the surprise of exactly nobody except pig-ignorant gun control advocates who barely know which end of a firearm is the shooty part, the same features that make a firearm good for killing enemy soldiers on a battlefield also make it good for killing the kinds of lawless goblins that a civilian might sometimes encounter).
The idea that Pomeroy, writing in 1888, would have made the slightest distinction between the "military" and "civilian" weapons of the day is completely preposterous, BECAUSE THEY WERE THE SAME WEAPONS (i.e., breech-loading rifles and single-action revolvers).
If everything you think you know about history comes from listening to hacks like Saul Cornell, you're woefully out of your depth.
I raised this same point in my responsive thread on Twitter, ya.
But more politely haha
My response, for those interested:
https://twitter.com/MorosKostas/status/1686810935271542784
In reply to Kostas Moros regarding your twitter thread (was easier to post here rather than as an insanely long Twitter thread as I don't have Twitter Blue):
To address some of the points from Moros’ reply.
Before 1. No misunderstanding as far as I can tell. The point of the article is that Moros badly mauled the interpretation of his sources, which I happily stand by (even after his response).
Under 1. It is completely legitimate to point out the Court’s arbitrary and artificial beginning and end dates for what constitutes evidence, and to also point out that several of your sources are outside the Court’s dates. Also, what the Court found regarding sources was obviously false, as the dissent and dozens of articles and books have shown before and since then.
Under 2. It’s not at all obvious to me what Moros would consider a collective right, or given his constant shifting of goal posts whether he could even provide an example of what it would look like in practice. A militia is comprised of individuals. No duh. No one has argued otherwise as far as I know. That basic fact does not mean all talk of an individual “bearing arms” in a militia automatically constitutes an “individual right.” Several times in his thread Moros seems to argue this. I hope that is not actually the intended argument, as that would be an irrelevant and silly word game.
For us, this is simple: is the source talking about militia service, or is it about using guns outside the context of militia service (personal self-defense, hunting, etc.)? If it is talking about militia service, then that is evidence for the militia point of view. If it is talking about personal self-defense, hunting, target shootings, etc., score a point for the individual rights point of view. And despite what Moros claims, most of the sources he selected are explicitly talking about the militia, and when they do mention something about arms outside of the militia they give a stamp of approval to laws that if were in practice today would horrify Moros.
Further, it is not clear that Moros himself really grasps natural rights philosophy and/or Locke. There is natural law, constitutional law, and common law. These are different things. Yes they interact and influence each other, but they are separate. Also, there is still substantial philosophical work being done over natural rights. It is obviously not as simple as “right to self-defense trumps everything else.”
And it is clear that Moros hasn’t thought through the pivot to natural rights. What else denies the right to “LIFE, liberty, and property”? Gun violence. If we care at all about those natural rights, finding ways to prevent them from being violated is an obvious government interest, and why we live in a society with a social contract and not an anarchic state of nature.
Further on natural rights, I personally don’t think a modern society should be trapped with an archaic interpretation of natural rights that saw slavery, genocide, and disenfranchising women as compatible with what Locke’s framework holds dear, but I guess Moros disagrees.
Also, defending one’s life and gun ownership are two distinct things. The idea that without a gun someone is defenseless is completely false. Life is a natural right. Incorrectly feeling safer is not.
Under 3. Would agree that Twitter is dumb.
For the individual source points, I will just address a couple. First, this comment: “No reason except all the other writers saying the same thing in the years to come, the fact that the federal government passed no gun laws until the 20th century, and the fact that no state banned or even moderately restricted peaceable citizens owning guns.” Moros is either knowingly lying or is incredibly incompetent here. Moros should know full well that the Federal government passed gun laws in territories where it felt it actually had jurisdiction and a need to do so. This article goes into detail about the laws and why the Bruen court branding them as “outliers” is patently dishonest. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/2022/08/territorial-gun-regulation-and-the-lost-history-of-the-federal-second-amendment/
In another comment, Moros states: “Yet he {Stevenson} offers NO EVIDENCE that his collective right view had any level of significant support.” This is simply a lie, even according to Moros several paragraphs back. Some the sources Moros cites support a collective right, as he admits in a couple places. Saying there is no historical evidence Stevenson has cited to show significant support for the collective view point is easily disproven by reading anything Stevenson has written.
On a final note: If as Moros says that the “right to keep and bear arms” is obviously about an individual right instead of a collective right, then we would see later states just copy and paste that language to signal the inclusion of such a right in their own constitutions. Instead, we see the exact opposite. A large percentage of states explicitly include “for the defense of self” or similar language.
Why would they do this if the individual rights framework was obvious in the original 2A? It is a completely incoherent view of history. What is more likely, that all of these states constitutional conventions were led by people who loved repeating themselves unnecessarily, or that Moros is wrong about how the amendment was seen at the time? Obviously, the latter.
Thanks for you work Devon.
My response here-
https://twitter.com/MorosKostas/status/1687172741278093313?t=Zc7PJJaRO0axtLOE9IEj4Q&s=19
In reply to BC: This isn't a remotely serious comment. If you think you could show up to a militia training day armed with your fowling piece, derringer, pepperbox, and Arkansas toothpick and receive anything other than laughs of derision from your comrades and outrage from the commanding officer, you are sadly mistaken.
Similarly, if you think people were regularly carrying their Brown Bess or Kentucky long rifle around town on a daily basis in case they needed to shoot a "lawless goblin," your problem isn't just with Saul Cornell, but any rational historical analysis.
Further, multiple commentators from the time made a distinction between "warlike" weapons and other weapons. If they didn't think there was a distinction, those commentators from the time wouldn't have used the word "warlike."