differentia specifica (was: guns & purses (was Re: guns & crime)

[Justin Schwartz]

Recent work by Gary Wills and others doesn't support this. Apparently guns 
were unsual in colonial days because theyw ere expensive, unreliable, and 
inaccurate. What put a gun in every housew was the federal government during 
the Civil War--the NRA started after the war to help train the newsly armed 
citizenry not to kill itself by accident. So, ironically, guns were not a 
bulkwark of liberty against the government. It was the hated tyrannical 
jackbooted feds who put guns into your cold dead fingers. --jks
>
>>From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
>>
>>Also, I do not think that Amerikkkan infatuation with guns has its roots 
>>in
>>the nature of capitalism.  It would be too noble.  We should rather seek
>>its roots in the fact that the New World was originally no more than a
>>penal colony - a dumping ground for criminals and assorted undesirables.
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