Date sent: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 20:59:33 -0700
From: Craig <clindsay@THEAGENT.COM>
Subject: Re: Excellent Second Amendment Article
To: AZRKBA@asu.edu
Send reply to: Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Arizona
<AZRKBA@asu.edu>
> Joe,
>
> Thanks for posting this link - it is indeed an excellent, and interesting
> article.
>
> One point I find particularly interesting, and I believe I first read about
> this on the MSNBC web site - probably based upon the same research. The
> article states:
> "In fact, Bellesiles says he has surveyed more than eleven thousand highly
> detailed probate records (inheritance lists for white males) from the years
> 1765 to 1850 from New England and Pennsylvania. His results, which will be
> published in this spring's The Origins of America's Gun Culture (Knopf),
> were astonishing: 'Roughly 14% of all adult, white, Protestant males owned
> firearms. Fourteen percent. That translates to about 3% of the total
> population of the United States at the time of the Revolution. This
> percentage holds fairly constant up through 1840. So that in other words,
> all this talk about universal gun ownership is entirely a myth that I can
> find no evidence of.'"
>
What garbage! So a guy gets old. Chances are that if he has any younger kin folk they are going to learn how to use firearms. And if he is getting on in years his role will not be the primary defender of the home (remember, old men send young men off to war). His role in old age then becomes a typical patrarchical one - teller of stories, teacher of wisdom.
So are the firearms in his estate when he dies? No!! Added into this the male right of passage and it most likely has been passed on to the next generation or the grandkids.
To recap:
1. transferred for purposes of male right of passage,
2. transferred to younger man when role of primary defender of
home changes over to next generation, and
3. (per chris) probate was for rich white males, which means that 1.
above was the purchase of a new weapon, thus keeping the old
weapons, and 2. above was not necessary, as there were probably
enough man-at-arms and other hirelings to perform the defense and
the rich old dead guy didn't have to defend anything (well, maybe
during a really bad slave rebellion). Probably dueling pistols or
some other odd socially acceptable collectable parlor nicknack.
(And real men duel with knives and swords, not pistols.)
Also this study assumes that you need a lawyer and the government for permission to die. Usually it just takes a shovel and some earthworms. People have been dying without benefit of paperwork for years.
-alvin
just another 'really tired of morons with phd's' old guy