Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
I’ll be teaching an online course: The History of the Second Amendment
Hullo, everyone. I’m just popping in to let you all know about an online course I’m teaching early next year called The History of the Second Amendment. It’s with a new startup called Chapter, which noticed that pretty much every course they were offering was either progressive or progressive-adjacent, decided that it didn’t want to become an echo chamber, and so asked me to teach one, too. I suggested the history of the right to keep and bear arms as a topic, they agreed, and here were are.
Chapter describes its system as “like a book club, but way more fun.” Each week, I’ll provide a reading list (which could be articles, reviews, videos, podcasts, or primary source documents), along with insights and tips on each one. There will be a community forum in which you can discuss each topic, as well as a rolling Q&A in which I will answer questions — both on their website and, if the topic warrants it, by video. Because people are busy, everything will be “asynchronous” — that is, you can take part whenever you’re free, rather than at times that are set by me. The course will last four weeks, it will cost $40 (actually: $35 for Ricochet members), and it will run the gamut.
— Week One will be on pre-Revolutionary America. We’ll explore how the right to keep and bear arms came over with the colonists from Britain, before making its way into the heart of American law.
— Week Two will be on the Founding Era. We’ll ask why the Second Amendment was added to the federal constitution, what were the Founders’ intentions in including it, and what did militias have to do with a right “of the people”?
— Week Three will be on the post-Civil War period, during which the Second Amendment took on a new meaning — especially during the era of Jim Crow — and was changed by the 14th Amendment.
— Week Four will be on the Second Amendment as it exists today. We’ll cover contemporary American jurisprudence, the Heller decision, and the political rebirth of the right.
The course will start on January 24th, 2022. If it interests you, can sign up here: https://getchapter.app/@cooke/guns. And if it doesn’t? Well, I shall cry into my golf cart batteries. Chapter has agreed to knock $5 off the price for Ricochet members if you use the code RICOCHET when checking out, so if you do sign up, make sure you do that.
Published in History, Law
Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community
of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.
Starving both the tanks of fuel, and the tank drivers of food, seems nicely symmetrical.
Every piece of equipment stops about the same way. Injuring the people that are operating it or supporting it.
The other option being to injure the equipment itself, but the people are usually more vulnerable.
The left better not be all that cavalier about a civil war, thinking mercenary police and military will do their fighting for them. Nobody is spared. Your backyard become the battlefield. In this digital age, both sides will know who and where you are. Voter registration lists will become intel. Food supplies will be halted. Cities today would suffer worse sieges than at any other time. Half the population of the country would be either killed or refugees. People who don’t value freedom underestimate those who do. People who value security over freedom won’t have either.
No it is the people. You kill a piece of equipment it can easily be replaced. Injure the support system (the people that run it or support it) and you use resources just trying to keep that person alive and heal. That is why AR/AK purpose to kill people. It is untrue. Its purpose is to injure so the side being injured has to take up resources on the injured.
The purpose of all military rifles is to kill. The purpose of the AR was to field a smaller bore so soldiers could carry more ammo on patrol . I doubt if any request for proposal stated the military wanted a rifle that would merely wound. You are correct about the benefit of wounding if the wound incapacitates.
That has been my fear since Obama was in office and they seemed to be courting it.
That too. I don’t think that the first mile of the supply chain will matter, but the last mile certainly does. If you can’t get molotovs on the tanks, you can sure get them on the fuel and supply trucks.
The key difference between materiel and personnel is that materiel cannot be discouraged by the fate of the materiel that went before it.
What’s that? Materiel? Crimony, I bet you know how to spell ordnance, too!
Strictly a REMF, so I can spell.
Yes, the Geneva Convention even says weapons can not be designed to maim. But I have been in many military/ strategy discussions where this is a point mentioned and then on faith. Killing the enemy is good. Injuring him in a way that cause the other side to to expend resources is even better. Especially for the US which typically fights from the point of superior resources and ability. Still believe what you want. But the 223/556 platform is such a poor killing platform that many areas will not allow it to hunt with because of its lack of ability to kill animals such as deer, bear, elk, etc.
Those animals are typically larger than people though.
They might banter that strategy about, and wounded do take up resources, and the smaller the caliber, the less lethal, and about 10 states don’t allow it for hunting deer, and much of what the gun banners say is wrong about the lethality, but that does not change the reason the military chose it nor the goal of the soldier shooting it. There was a saying back in the day, if they give you a .38, shoot somebody and take their M-16, then use the M-16 to shoot somebody and take their 50 cal. The pointy end cares about stopping the enemy, not making him mad. You also forget the wounded enemy can become your problem, too when you are advancing.
Most places will not allow you to use them to hunt deer. A normal deer runs between 125lbs to 300lbs. About person sized.