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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
I’ve read the book on that subject.
Seawriter,
I see good in your argument, then bad, and finally more good.
The first good is that it appeals passionately to our shared political and religious values…
The bad is that it is a straw man argument.
Finally, this good: After you set up your straw man, but before running it through with your bayonet, you politely asked your opponent to verify that the straw man was not a straw man, but his actual argument…
So, more good than bad, 2 to 1.
Haven’t read all the comments, but I always figured that the thinking of the framers was that any state of the art flintlock or cannon were permitted. Historically, rifles and caplocks were guaranteed upon their invention, as were multi-round revolvers, cartridge-firing weapons, and semi-automatic pistols. The same should hold true for advancements in artilery and armored vehicles.
It is true that the possibility of the invention of more deadly weapons was not foreseen, but nonetheless the advancement of technology and lethality was accepted over the next century.
It seems to me that given the precedence of the acceptance of advancements and inventions of newer weaponry that nukes, and armed jet fighters, and MOABs are Constitutionally protected to US citizens and if extraordinary lethality is to prohibifed, it would and should require a clear and specific Constitutional amendment to modify the 2A.
Otherwise, this leaves valid the argument that cartridge-firing pistols and “assault” “weapons of war” may be prohibited due to their technology or lethality.
D. A’s point seems to be that the Constitution does not give explicit permission to do a thing or possess an item. In that, he’s absolutely right. The Framers argued long and hard about the difference between the government granting rights and the government acknowledging that it would not interfere with rights. The Bill of Rights may be more accurately be named The Bill of Government Don’ts. The much-overlooked 10th Amendment basically tells the Government to mind it’s own business. The rest of the Constitution outlines the business it should be minding.
Lots of comments so it’s easy to miss something. Where do state national guard forces fit into the discussion about militia, if at all?
If budget woes lead to budget cuts at the Vatican, the I plan to import and employ the Swiss Guard to protect my rights and property.
Slim’s sister?
Great question! I have errands to run, so will have to come back to this later. (Apologies!)
New Texas!
I believe he’s a lawyer. 😸
The Swiss Guard used to be in several countries. The French king had them, too. Switzerland had few resources other than men to use as mercenaries.
No, Easy was his brother Samuel Lindley.
Most likely as federalized jackboots. Some will break the other way, but decades of federalization doctrine has produced an “assistant federal” state of mind in a lot of the guard.
I’m not singling out the guard here — this applies to police as well.
Hell, tell a mall cop that he’s an important part of the war effort now, and he’ll liquidate those kulaks at the Cinnabon.
Earlier in this thread I used the most expansive and I believe 2A-accurate sense of the term militia: all able-bodied males of a certain age range. Now including women at least officially.
That means the right and duty of any people to unite and defend themselves against any threat even if “the phone call is coming from within the house.”
There’s a neat trick of law wherein any “legal”* militia must fall under the government in a time of crisis. Well begging the colonel’s pardon, but this precludes the use of militia when the government IS the crisis. This is about as anti-Constitutional as you can get, given the history of the government thereby constituted, and the Declaration.
* or recognized, or some such thing. Going from memory.
That’s what she said.
Hello, @bobthompson – thanks for your patience. The short answer to your question is: They don’t.
During the decades between 1904 and 1941, the Regular Army successfully extended full control over the National Guard, ending its separate status and independence. By 1954 (in conjunction with the establishment of peacetime conscription) the Regular Army had reduced the National Guard into an auxiliary force, not a militia.
Today, the Federal defense budget provides 90 to 95% of the funding towards each state’s National Guard budget. Following the principle of, “them’s that pay the bills gets to make the rules,” state governors have very little actual authority regarding the recruiting, equipping, training, or employment of their respective Guard forces. Notice that even in the event of a natural disaster, governors will almost immediately request a Federal declaration of emergency? This is the necessary step to unlocking the committed funds provided by the Department of Defense (DoD) needed to actually deploy the Guard from more than about 72 hours. In other words, “Big Army” has got it set up so that the governors of the several States can’t employ their own Guard forces without “Big Army” permission.
That’s the exact opposite of what the Framers of the Constitution intended when they included the various clauses relating to the militia and oversight of standing armies in Art. I, Sec. 8 and Art. II, Sec 2. (These portions all pre-date the 2A by two years.)
Here is where the discussion gets REALLY complex, and tends to make a lot of people uncomfortable. I argue that the militia needs to be re-established. The National Guard is fine as a Federal auxiliary; leave it be. But each state ought to be exploring new and creative ways to bring the militia back into meaningful existence. I’m ready to consider measures regulating the ownership, training and supervision of arms provided it comes with a “new birth of freedom” in the form of a revitalized militia.
No argument from me on the principle you outline here.
The right to have a militia is an underlying foundation of the Constitution, expressly to protect against the potential of tyranny from that same government. The 2A, 9A and 10A reinforce and reaffirm this right.
They were the best mercenaries for a couple of centuries.
Eventually, they only sent them to places that the King of France said they could. Plus the Pope.
Nothing strange sounding about this if we had the government we should have.
There are laws differentiating the organized and unorganized militia, and this does not mean the difference between marching and milling. “Organized” means Guard or equivalent. Membership in any “higher” auxiliary body pre-empts membership in any “lesser” body due to competing requirements in time of crisis.
Outside the treatment of the US Code lie the “Constitutional” militias, being those not accounted for in (statute) law but which claim their legitimacy (on paper anyway) from the Constitution itself. These are a mixed bag. Some suck, and others sound great. All are on shaky legal ground with the USG, as the government increasingly does not acknowledge the Constitution as any check on its prerogatives. Here’s Wikipedia on militias, specifically bookmarked to the Constitutional sorts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_militia_movement#Constitutionalists
As I understand the history, at the time the United States Constitution (including the Second Amendment) was adopted, the United States did not have a standing army. Article III, Section 8 provided Congress with the authority to “raise and support armies” and to “provide and maintain a navy,” but those authorities had not be exercised except to deal with specific conflicts. A standing army was not instituted until many years after the U.S. Constitution was adopted.
So, if any defense of the fledgling United States was needed, it would have to come from private or state sources, and for effectiveness depend on weapons widely distributed in ownership, and with a wide population of people familiar with their manufacture, use, and operation of those weapons. Which suggests via logic that the Founders assumed widespread ownership of and familiarity with the use of weapons of war. A “well regulated militia” to use those weapons cannot be formed if the people of which that militia is formed are not familiar with the use and operation of those weapons of war. Which in turn suggests that, in order to have the specified “well regulated militia,” the “arms” which the people have a right to keep and bear is pretty broad, and does include “weapons of war.”
So my logic leads me to a conclusion that “arms” as used in the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is a very broad term, and the government has no right to significantly burden the right of the people to keep and bear pretty much any weapon the people choose to have.
Q. If Texas whomped up a milita and rounded up illegals what legal power would be used to stop them?
Im going to assume that any artillery, in case of civil war, will be seized from sympathizers in national guard/army bases. Followed by units that declare for one side another.
These are great points. It makes sense. Still, I wish they’d been clearer if that’s what they meant. I’m enough of a textualist to want to see some contemporary sources, or older common law sources, using the term “arms” in this way, or defining the ancient right this way, before being totally convinced. Those may be out there, though.
I believe that they were clear, but that we have allowed our language to drift without really thinking about it which pales in comparison to the active subversion and reversing of meanings as practiced more recently.
Nope. Those items are technically small arms. The 2 A says right to keep and bear arms…not small arms. Cannon were often owned privately. In fact during the Revolutionary war and War of 1812 naval cannon were in short supply for actual Navy because privateers were snapping up everything on the market.
Nuclear arms. Arms race. Etc.
Actually, Charlie is wrong about that. Cannon are arms. Muskets, swords, pistols, etc are SMALL arms. In WWI and WWII the Royal Navy took over and ARMED passenger ships and they were called ARMED Merchant Cruisers. They were ARMED with a variety of CANNON. I say all this to indicate the ARMS include cannons and always have, at least from a military stand point. the 2A restricts the Governments ability to regulate ARMS not just small arms.
That is the kind of question you indicated…the Constitution refers tot he ability of the Government to restrict the keeping and bearing of ARMS.
Are you intentionally conflating the difference between groups of people and Arms? The Second Ammendment refers to Arms not to anything else. Fairly simple, actually.