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.
Regarding ‘Citizen-owned’ Artillery
Can private individuals own and possess artillery?
This question came up during the Ricochet podcast of the recent New Orleans meet-up (link here) attended by R> co-founder @roblong and R> owner @charlescwcooke; “Is it legal for private citizens to have cannons?” Charlie answered quite succinctly, and I’ll summarize here: Yes. The US Constitution protects the rights of private citizens to purchase ordnance and stores for heavy, crew-served weapons in addition to the individual small arms addressed in the Second Amendment.
My US Constitution students are always surprised to learn that it is 100% legal for them to own artillery…real, live “big boom-boom” guns. “Professor Hoplite, can we actually buy cannons?”
Sure, I reply…the catch is whether or not you have enough cash (or credit) to place the order.
Let’s consider a typical field artillery piece: an M777 howitzer, 155 millimeter in caliber (about 6″ or so in diameter). It is a towed gun, takes a crew of five “red legs” to fire it, and can hit targets from a range of 13 to 15 miles with simple high-explosive shells. There are four guns in a battery, fighting as a single unit (usually all four guns fire at the same target.) So, what does an M777 cost? $3.08 million USD, assuming you buy 37 of them in a single purchase order. Of course, that includes spare parts, but the total order price in 2008 was about $114 million. (here)
Then, you’ll need ammunition. Prior to the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the US Army standard production run was 14, 400 155mm artillery rounds a month. Exact numbers are difficult, but a good cost estimate (pre-Ukraine) is about $2200 ea. here. That means the Department of Defense spends an average of $31.7 million per month buying 155 artillery rounds (not counting the increased demand for supplying Ukraine*). A typical artillery fire mission includes three to five rounds to zero-in on the target, and then three volleys from the battery on the target, and then a report back from the forward observer: 15 to 17 rounds. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s about $35,000 to fire a simple single-point artillery mission.
So what can we glean from all these numbers? Well, to start with, cannons are not sold in single units; if you want to buy a cannon, you have to buy them in the Costco-size packages (35+ per order). Be ready to write a big check: $108.5 million at least. Typical combat load of rounds per gun is 2,222 (here) so buying ammunition for each of the cannon will add another $171 million ($2,200 per round x 2,222 rounds per gun x 35 guns). Total for the field artillery starter kit? $279.5 million.
My conclusions? Legal, yes. But there are few civilians who have the means to buy cannons (certainly not any cannons that are anything more than dangerous noisemakers). If and when the time comes that citizens need cannons, they had better have figured out what the “work-around” is going to be, because waiting to buy them won’t really be an option.
*Currently, the US defense industrial base doesn’t have the expansion capacity to meet this demand, regardless of how much money the Biden administration is chucking around. The backlog in production orders has to be measured in years.
Published in Military
Of course. And as I said, the 2A may protect those rhings. But the existence of privateers doesn’t necessarily prove it. Again, the decision not to issue a certain regulation doesn’t always mean a lack of constitutional power to do so.
I am imagining here the bikini girls in Army boots who pose with machine guns. Please don’t ruin this with lame facts.
I will yield to your superior knowledge on the subject. After all what do I know about privateers and the legalities of arming them? Obviously you must know more than I do.
Autocorrect: Did you mean ‘Enemy’?
How many books have you written related to the subject?
I don’t know much about it at all. Don’t claim to, and I’m happy to learn. My point concedes whatever facts there are with respect to the arming of privateers, and even the legalities of it. What I’m looking for, and maybe Cooke provides, is the connection between the legality of owning a warship, and the constitutional right to own it. Those are two different things. A person can lawfully do a lot of things that they don’t have a constitutional right to do – drive 70 mph on the highway, file for bankruptcy protection, install a pool in their yard, and so on.
Bannerman’s catalog…
It does.
Private. Armed. Vessels. If a vessel is private and armed, the guns are private too.
Moreover, most merchantmen of the era carried guns known as stern chasers that fired from the stern of the ship to deal with pirates – and privateers. Those guns were privately owned too.
Yep. An unarmed merchant back then had another name: Easy Pickens.
I don’t disagree with any of that. The 2A is not really implicated in all of that. No one disputes that Congress did allow “Private. Armed. Vessels.” The question is does the 2A require them to allow it. Or could they have constitutionally banned that practice if they’d wanted to? To what extent does the 2A allow Congress to regulate cannons on ships? I get that they allowed it, but did they have to allow it? That’s my question.
Yeah, I have to be careful where I use that terminology since my daughter carries now. Not as many sixty years ago as now.
Which is totally and historically wrong. The shot heard round the world was specifically because the British came to seize an armory with military grade weapons in it.
They were explicitly talking about things like cannon so that they could in fact defend themselves from an intrusive government.
Right. And Charles expressly says this in the podcast, that the Second Amendment covers “arms” and that cannons are not arms, but “ordnance.” Cannons are legal, but it isn’t because of the Second Amendment.
From the perspective of kings and high level ministers and other heads of state of the 18th century, a “weapon of war” might look less like a musket, or a rifle, or even a single ship, and more like regiments, strategic fortresses, and fleets.
In light of that, did the framers believe that the 2nd Amendment guaranteed the right of a citizen to keep a regiment of Hessians on his farm? What about just one company? I mean, if he could afford it. Not talking about the militia, here. I mean one entire regiment under the sole command of one dude, some ultra-wealthy gentleman landowner. Or would they have said, “That’s a little much. Congress can force a person to disband their private army.”
It’s a stupid question, I know, but I find it interesting nonetheless.
I guess I’d have to keep it down my left leg.
I think the question here rests on whether a weapon bigger than what a person can carry would properly be defined as ‘arms’.
I note that swords were mentioned earlier, something which a lot of states seem to believe they can ban.
You do realize that there is still a private army in the UK?
I understand they exist, and of course did exist back the in the 18th century. Mercenary regiments were common and there are a bunch of them now. A couple are active in Ukraine I’m sure. But that’s not my question. My question is “does the 2nd Amendment guarantee a right to have one?” That’s not answered by the mere fact that they exist. Especially in other countries.
Actually, the answer to your question (and it’s not a stupid one) is that in the 1770’s, private companies of militia really were one option. In Pennsylvania, all militia companies were private “military associations,” or Associator companies. In Virginia, a well-known private citizen* raised, organized and equipped a regiment of infantry out of his own pocket. It wasn’t explicitly to defend his own plantation, but it certainly might have been employed that way.
I believe the more important questions are those dealing with the relationship of private ownership of arms & ordinance and the militia itself. Currently, the militia (as the Founders understood it) doesn’t exist. It’s been stamped out. But the Constitutional rights to have a militia still exists. So too do private citizens have the right to acquire and maintain the arms & ordinance necessary for such a militia.
*George Washington
But the FBI will infiltrate and provoke them into illegal plots.
Yeah, it’s funny how that works, isn’t it?
Would they have viewed a regiment of foreign mercenaries differently? Sure, a landowner, or other wealthy guy, could raise and fund a militia company from the citizenry in the region. But what about a regiment of Walloons rented from some prince in Belgium, a group of men who had no organic ties to the local community? Does the 2nd Amendment protect that? This would presumably be something the militia might be called out in response to. If someone had hired a foreign mercenary regiment, let’s say, right after Congress or the state legislature had passed a law he didn’t like, would Congress have violated his 2nd Amendment rights if it ordered him to disband his regiment, and called out the militia against it?
I don’t know the answer, but my gut reaction is that they would not have seen such a reaction as violating the 2A.
You ought to see the concealed carry holster for the thing . . .
What foreign mercenaries? Those thousand men working on my farm? Sure they immigrated recently, but they are good Americans now. And yes we drill on Sundays after church. That’s because we stand ready to defend the Republic if called upon and believe in being prepared.
The only way someone in Colonial or Federal times could have maintained a regiment would have been if he could have afforded to pay them. Which means 1000 men would have to be employed by him doing something gainful. Which would have meant more than strutting around all day playing soldier.
And if he did hire a regiment of mercenaries because Congress or the State passed a law he didn’t like? That’s his prerogative. But if he uses them in an unlawful manner – particularly in a rebellion – that would have been rebellion and treated in the same way as events from Shays Rebellion to the War of the Rebellion were treated. So it is the unlawful use of that regiment, not the existence of the regiment that is at issue.
Also an attempt to usurp authority in that manner probably would not have gotten to the point where the state could intervene because his neighbors – the ones with their own privately owned cannon – would have dealt with him in a manner for which the Second Amendment was created.
I thought your last answer was dumb, but this one tops it by a wide margin.
Did I offend you in some way? My apologies, if so.
You didn’t offend me. Really silly suppositions not supported by reality? Yeah, occasionally. Especially if followed by a previous string of really silly suppositions which have already been frequently corrected by a wide range of commentators? Those I find annoying. After a while you wonder whether someone is really that dumb or just trolling.
Well, with respect to the mercenary regiment question, I said at the outset it was a stupid question, by which I meant I raised it more as an interesting thought experiment than anything serious.
As to the silly suppositions frequently corrected, I don’t think that’s accurate. As I’ve said, I’m not arguing any of the facts as to whether these things occurred or were allowed by law. The question I’m interested in is, rather, whether they are/were protected by the 2A. I could have missed it, but I don’t think anyone has really addressed that, other than Randy who pointed out that Cooke, with respect to cannon, did not think the term “arms” in the 2A included cannon.
Seawriter, we’re having a friendly conversation here. You may want to tamp down the hostility a couple of notches.
Gentlemen; as post author, let me request we maintain a measure of civility.
I appreciate the various perspectives being brought to the discussion. In particular, I welcome the opportunity to discuss the full and complete meaning of both the 2A and the broader Constitutional context of the militia. One without the other is like trying to run a 100 yard dash by hopping on one leg.
@daventers, I take your previous question as you refer to it: a thought experiment, worth responding to. I hope my reply was helpful. Your conjecture regarding a rented regiment of European mercenaries requires accepting an awful lot of assumptions (we’ve no examples of that actually happening.) What we do know regarding this possible scenario is that, starting in the mid 1760’s, the Regular regiments of the British Army stationed in America were largely recruited from outside England. A third or more of the 42nd Royal Highland Regiment of Foot (the famous Blackwatch Scots) were actually German! Does that make them foreign mercenaries? (I think not, but maybe that’s topic for a different thread?)