What Does "Arms" Mean Today?

I have been informed by books written back in the days of our founding fathers that people occasionally gathered in bars to talk and laugh and sing, and eat and drink.  Sometimes when one of the congregants drank too much, he might stagger out to his horse and head off to home safe in the knowledge that the horse knew where “home” was.  Occasionally, stories assure us, a patron would be carried out and placed into his wagon, and his horses would be untied, slapped on the rump and told to “go home”.   Wives sometimes woke late at night or maybe early in the morning and found their horses standing in the driveway, still in harness and with wagon still attached.  And they might find a “retched” thing lying in the back of the wagon.  But times have changed.  Now you stagger out to your car to try to drive home and you are already violating several laws.  The friends you leave in the bar and perhaps even the bartender himself might share in your legal consequences in the event of "your" accident, and those results of DWI are extremely serious and expensive.  Times have changed.

And back in the days of our founding fathers, people also carried their muskets when they went hunting and for security.  They were assured that their new right “to keep and bear arms” granted by their constitution “shall not be infringed”. Those “arms” even included pistols, dueling pistols, although they were not much used by any military unit.  It was not until some sixty years later new rifles that could fire “bullets” were introduced and shortly thereafter new pistols were developed that could also fire those bullets. Twenty years later, new rifles would fire faster, using revolver action, then came the bolt action and finally lever operation.  All this in a little more than 100 years after the Declaration of Independence.

Wars have changed swiftly too.  No longer fought with lance, spear or arrow, now the term military “arms” means guns, machine guns, hand grenades, flame throwers and more.  Cannon are no longer pulled by horses, some are mobile, and some powerful rifles are essentially cannons.  Machine guns have become smaller, and now some powerful rifles are essentially machine guns.  Bullets have become more powerful too, some have their points hollowed out to create greater damage, some are armored and will pierce almost anything, some are designed to ignite or explode on impact.  And some combinations permit multiple options like the ability to fire at speeds of 900 rounds a minute, or just using a 30 round clip, to fire one bullet every 4 seconds say, for two minutes without reloading – and then reloading could be just slipping a new 30-round clip into the rifle.  Or a 100 round clip could be emptied in about seven seconds.  

No one, not even the most rabid members of the National Rifle Association considers items like hand grenades, flame-throwers, howitzers, tanks, bombs, atomic or nuclear weapons within the parameter of “arms”– but that’s the way it is TODAY.  Next year, or a few years on down the road, some of these items might begin to appear for sale from the gun and ammunition manufacturers of the United States.  Those powerful corporations that the NRA represents are out to make their profit, and they are very profitable. Perhaps it is time that we as a nation interrupt this Evolution of the term Arms and bring some Intelligent Design into a problem that is clearly getting worse and worse.