The Musket Debate (Part 2)
The 2nd Amendment (Part 10)
Intro To The Constitution (Part 22)
Previous article in this series: Rapid-Fire Guns & High-Capacity Magazines
Let’s begin with a quote from President Joe Biden to start us off with a good summary of this argument.
“And, again, for any of the press, any of the press listening, this doesn’t violate anybody’s 2nd amendment right. There’s no violation of the 2nd amendment right. We talk like–There’s no amendment that’s absolute. When the amendment was passed, it didn’t say anybody could own a gun, and any kind of gun, and any kind of weapon. You couldn’t buy a cannon, when this amendment was passed. And so, [there’s] no reason why you should be able to buy certain assault weapons.”
— Joe Biden [111 @ 0:23 – 0:52]
I love how he uses the example of buying a cannon as the pinnacle of absurdity, as if OBVIOUSLY it was illegal for private citizens to own cannons. Dude, you can buy a cannon today. Even with all the gun regulation that has been passed, you can still buy them. Right now, there are tons of people (private citizens) who {own & [regularly shoot]} cannons.
And, let’s not forget Tench Coxe:
“THE POWERS OF THE SWORD ARE IN THE HANDS OF THE YEOMANRY OF AMERICA FROM SIXTEEN TO SIXTY. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American. What clause in the state or federal constitution hath given away that important right. … I do not hesitate to affirm, that the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”
— Tench Coxe; “To The Citizens of the United States”; Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) – Feb. 20, 1788; Page 2 (Italics emphasis in original; bolding emphasis added) [18]
Does that sound like you couldn’t buy a cannon? Or that there was any limit whatsoever? On the contrary, he literally says “unlimited”.
In fact, even mainstream media outlets have conceded that such claims are wrong, but even they can’t bring themselves to state the full truth, and end up peppering their rebuttal with {insults & partial-confirmations}:
“President Joe Biden said Monday that gun rights are not absolute, claiming that ordinary American citizens “couldn’t buy cannons” when the Second Amendment was drafted. Taking another swipe at extremist gun supporters after the Texas school massacre, Biden said there is no good reason for law-abiding citizens to buy assault weapons with high-capacity ammunition. … Biden also added a controversial claim: “You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed.” Fact-checkers dispute that assertion, noting that the Second Amendment, which was drafted in 1791, does not specifically exclude ownership of any weapon.”
— The Seattle Times: Biden says ‘you couldn’t buy cannons’ under Second Amendment in swipe at guns after Texas school massacre [179]
Classic name-calling propaganda strategy: calling your political opponents “extremists” to undermine their legitimacy. Also, the 2nd amendment wasn’t drafted in 1791; It was drafted in 1789, and then ratified by the States in 1791.
“Then the president invoked history to support his stance. “From the very beginning, the Second Amendment didn’t say you can own any gun you want, big as you want,” Biden said at the press conference. “You couldn’t buy a cannon when, in fact, the Second Amendment passed.” This isn’t the first time Biden made such an assertion about the Second Amendment. Or even the second. During his presidential campaign, he made a similar claim about cannon ownership in the Revolutionary War. We rated that False. Then, in 2021, Biden said the Second Amendment “limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own.” False again. The Second Amendment did not place limits on individual ownership of cannons. … While there are robust regulations dealing with gun ownership today, federal gun regulation came in 1934, decades after the Second Amendment was introduced into the U.S. Bill of Rights. That regulation did not rely upon the Second Amendment.”
— Politifact: Joe Biden recycles false claim that the Second Amendment limited gun ownership [180]
I love how they said that gun regulation came “decades after the Second Amendment”, as if implying that it was anywhere close to soon after. The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Bro, 1791 to 1934 is 143 years; I mean, I guess it’s technically accurate to refer to {a century & a half} as “decades”, but come on. Assuming 25 years per generation, that’s just shy of 6 generations; plenty of time for cultural decay. Some people will argue that some cities had laws against concealed carry as soon as the {early & mid} 1800s, but that’s not the same thing. Saying that you can’t hide a gun is not the same thing as saying that you can’t {own or carry} that gun at all. Concealed-carry is in contrast to open-carry, which has been legal for ages. In other words, if you have a gun with you, that’s fine, but it needs to be easily visible so that everyone knows you have it. That’s a very different thing than saying: you can’t carry one in public at all, or even own it privately at home.
“Parenthetical asides from a prepared text often trip up presidents, especially Biden. In this case, he repeated a claim — that Americans were prohibited from owning cannons — that has already been fact-checked as false when he made it during the presidential campaign.
…
‘Everything in that statement is wrong,’ said David Kopel, the research director and Second Amendment project director at the Independence Institute. After 1791, ‘there were no federal laws about the type of gun you could own, and no states limited the kind of gun you could own.’ Not until the early 1800s were there any efforts to pass restrictions on carrying concealed weapons, he said.
‘I think what he’s saying here is that the Second Amendment was never understood to guarantee everyone the right to own all types of weapons, which I believe is true,’ said Kermit Roosevelt, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. ‘As phrased, it sounds like the Second Amendment itself limited ownership, which is not true.’ ”
— The Washington Post – Biden’s false claim that the 2nd Amendment bans cannon ownership [181]
Analyzing Kermit Roosevelt’s claim will take a bit more than just an aside, so we’ll tackle that in a later section. For now, let’s just move on to some more evidence against the claim that people couldn’t own cannons and other big weapons.
Letters of Marque
“The Congress shall have Power…To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;”
— Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the US Constitution [19]
Letters of Marque & Reprisal were effectively permits, issued by Congress, which allowed private citizens to act militarily against a specified foreign power, under the sanctioned protection of the government. However, rather than becoming a direct government agent as one does when inducted into the military, instead, under Letters of Marque & Reprisal, such individuals remained private citizens while they conducted such attacks, which is why they were called “privateers”. Essentially, the difference between {[a privateer] & [a pirate]} is whether or not a government formally recognized them and condoned their actions. However, because of this government protection, privateers were accorded legal protections under the rules of war, whereas pirates were just considered criminals and had no such protection. Under these permits, not only could privateers {attack & seize} foreign {ships & cargo}, but they also had the right to bring their spoils back to a friendly port, and submit their claim to the court. And, assuming they didn’t do anything wrong, then the court would confirm their claim, the government would take some portion as a tax, and the rest were transferred into the legally recognized ownership of the privateers; including the ship. Alternatively, the {ship & goods} could be auctioned off, and the proceeds paid out to the privateers, minus the tax.
Since such terms aren’t used much in modern times, let me clarify: the phrase “Letters of Marque and Reprisal” refers to two separate things: {Letters of Marque}, and {Letters of Reprisal}. As for the difference between them, they’re largely quite similar, but the main distinction derives from the {context & intent} of their use, which thus results in somewhat different trends in their attributes. A letter of marque is issued during a war, and is intended to leverage civilian weaponry to assist in the war effort by offering spoils of war to incentivize private citizens to volunteer their martial capacity, thus increasing the military force against the enemy. So, letters of marque were often much broader in their permission (i.e. attack English ships, or harass their supply lines, etc.), and would often be valid for as long as the war went on. Meanwhile, a letter of reprisal is issued when the country is not at war, but some foreign power has done some degree of harm to the United States, which demands a retaliation, but is not so severe as to merit a formal declaration of war. Thus, letters of reprisal were often much more {specific & restrictive} in their permissions (i.e. only {attack or seize} this many ships, or only target this kind of cargo, or this specific shipping lane, etc.), and would also tend to be much shorter in their duration, since the purpose is merely to satisfy a specific grievance. However, both {[Letters of Marque] & [Letters of Reprisal]} granted private citizens permission to use their own personal weapons to attack & seize foreign assets, under the protection of the US government.
Here’s the Washington Post again:
“In fact, you do not have to look far in the Constitution to see that private individuals could own cannons. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 gives Congress the power to declare war. But there is another element of that clause that might seem strange to modern ears — Congress also had the power to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.” What’s that? These were special waivers that allowed private individuals to act as pirates on behalf of the United States against countries engaged in war with it. … Individuals who were given these waivers and owned warships obviously also obtained cannons for use in battle.”
— The Washington Post – Biden’s false claim that the 2nd Amendment bans cannon ownership [181]
I omitted a blurb in the middle where they incorrectly explain the difference between Letters of Marque, and Letters of Reprisal.
The important thing to understand is that these permits didn’t grant people permission to acquire their {cannons & warships}; they already had them. All that these permits granted them permission to do, was to use their privately owned {guns, cannons, & warships} to commit acts of war against a foreign power. In fact, it wasn’t even just {battleships & cannons}; there are multiple instances of inventors {designing & building} submarines for use in naval combat. [136]
Next article in this series: “The 2nd Amendment Can’t Fulfill Its Purpose”
Citations
This entire Constitution series was written as a single big document over the course of several years; so, all the citations are mixed up together. When I went back to break it up into pieces, I wasn’t confident that I could redistribute all the citations & their reference numbers without screwing something up. So, I decided to leave all the citations together, and post them as the final article in the series.
