Originally published on Breach Bang Clear
Weapon Trivia Wednesday: Three Vintage Assault Rifles of our Forefathers
Tom Marshall
This is the Metal Storm, first widely discussed as a modern weapon platform some twenty years ago. It uses an electronic ignition and multiple barrels with superposed projectile loads to achieve a rate of fire equal to tens, even hundreds, of thousands of rounds per minute. Its concept of operation goes back to at least the late 16th century — and was utilized in a weapon offered to the Continental Congress the same year British Generals Burgoyne and Howe were fighting American General George Washington in New York and Pennsylvania.
Gun control advocates often decry modern weaponry as counter to the Second Amendment. They say it was written during a time when firearms technology was so primitive as to make the Amendment irrelevant in the modern age.
The Second Amendment wasn’t written to apply to assault weapons, they say, or The Founding Fathers could never have imagined today’s high capacity rifles, etc. etc., ad nauseum.
Setting aside the “assault weapon” misnomer, I admit it makes a tempting argument, but only if you have no knowledge of — or regard for — the history of our Constitution, the men who wrote it, or the war they fought. I’ll leave that on the shelf for now, though. For now let’s examine the logical fallacy that our forefathers could not possibly have known about, or anticipated, the capability of firearms we now take for granted. To do that we’ll look at some of the firearms technology that was available before and during the period the Bill of Rights was envisioned and written.
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