#merritt roe smith

[sunaleisocial]

Investigating the past to see technology’s future

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/investigating-the-past-to-see-technologys-future/

Investigating the past to see technology’s future

The MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) recently organized and hosted a two-day symposium, The History of Technology: Past, Present, and Future.

The symposium was held June 7-8 at MIT’s Wong Auditorium, and featured scholars from a variety of institutions with expertise in the history of technology. Each presented their ideas about the intersection of science, technology, and society, the field’s needs, and opportunities for its future development.

“We’re pleased to provide a venue in which these kinds of conversations can occur,” said Deborah Fitzgerald, STS program head and former dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

The symposium opened with welcoming remarks from Fitzgerald and MIT Professor Merritt Roe Smith. Fitzgerald and Smith are both Leverett Howell and William King Cutten Professors of the History of Technology at MIT.

“These kinds of gatherings — of old friends and colleagues and several generations of students — create new opportunities to advance scholarship, create connections, and keep abreast of what’s happening in the field,” Smith said. “Seeing the future through the lens of our shared pasts adds an important perspective on current innovations.”

More than 20 scholars made presentations during the symposium. The topics and speakers included:

David Lucsko PhD ’05, professor of history at Auburn University: “How Things Work and Why It Matters — or, Why Poring over Automotive Wiring Diagrams from the 1970s Isn’t Actually a Colossal Waste of Time;”

Dave Unger, an independent public historian: “Tools for Imagining a Better World: Social Technology, Organizational Dark Matter, and Reading for Difference;”

Gregory Clancey, associate professor at the National University of Singapore: “The History of Technology in an Age of Mass Extinction;” and 

Ruth Schwartz Cowan, professor emerita at the University of Pennsylvania: “Does the History of Technology have a Paradigm?”

[jcmarchi]

Investigating the past to see technology’s future

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/investigating-the-past-to-see-technologys-future/

Investigating the past to see technology’s future

The MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) recently organized and hosted a two-day symposium, The History of Technology: Past, Present, and Future.

The symposium was held June 7-8 at MIT’s Wong Auditorium, and featured scholars from a variety of institutions with expertise in the history of technology. Each presented their ideas about the intersection of science, technology, and society, the field’s needs, and opportunities for its future development.

“We’re pleased to provide a venue in which these kinds of conversations can occur,” said Deborah Fitzgerald, STS program head and former dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

The symposium opened with welcoming remarks from Fitzgerald and MIT Professor Merritt Roe Smith. Fitzgerald and Smith are both Leverett Howell and William King Cutten Professors of the History of Technology at MIT.

“These kinds of gatherings — of old friends and colleagues and several generations of students — create new opportunities to advance scholarship, create connections, and keep abreast of what’s happening in the field,” Smith said. “Seeing the future through the lens of our shared pasts adds an important perspective on current innovations.”

More than 20 scholars made presentations during the symposium. The topics and speakers included:

David Lucsko PhD ’05, professor of history at Auburn University: “How Things Work and Why It Matters — or, Why Poring over Automotive Wiring Diagrams from the 1970s Isn’t Actually a Colossal Waste of Time;”

Dave Unger, an independent public historian: “Tools for Imagining a Better World: Social Technology, Organizational Dark Matter, and Reading for Difference;”

Gregory Clancey, associate professor at the National University of Singapore: “The History of Technology in an Age of Mass Extinction;” and 

Ruth Schwartz Cowan, professor emerita at the University of Pennsylvania: “Does the History of Technology have a Paradigm?”

[gnatalie-moat]

Social media has become a massive part of our culture and our lives. For many, it is a primary source of entertainment, connection, and creativity. It is used by millions every day, and I doubt you could find a single person in America that hasn’t heard of Facebook before. However, if you had asked around just twenty years ago, you would have gotten a very different response.

Social media has exploded in the past two decades. Youtube, MySpace, and Facebook were the bedrock of the new form of media, and they just exploded from there. Due to this rapid growth, we have generations that are split right down the middle. We have some that had nothing even remotely similar to social media, and we have some that have known about it for as long as they can remember. This opens up the door for many debates, and one has taken the spotlight above all.

Social media is targeted as the primary cause of adolescent’s and young adult’s declining mental health.

Recently social media has been singled out as the leading cause of mental health issues in teens and young adults. While there may be some correlation between social media and mental illness, it would be an incorrect assumption to place sole causation on social media.

In the past few years, many studies have been done that focus on the potential correlation between rapidly declining mental health and the use of social media. It has become the target to aim for, and most arguments state the same few theories. These theories most commonly include the big three:

“likes are addictive”

“comparing lives leads to self-hatred”

“social media replaces face-to-face interactions”

I can understand why people are making these accusations and assumptions, but I believe their idea as a whole is flawed. People find it easy to look at the last decade and pin this problem on one of the largest new things added to our lives. Social media is absolutely the easiest thing to blame; it seems to fit every stereotype we’ve ever had about kids getting their feelings hurt, so it makes it very easy to tick those boxes. This has made it extremely uncommon for anyone to try to find any alternatives.

I believe a large reason why we are seeing such a spike in the unquestioned blaming of social media is its sense of being a large, clear divider between generations. Many of the people doing the assuming in the first place are the parents of adolescents, or others in the same generation as those parents. They look down on the younger generations (Millenial and Gen Z) and they see things they don’t understand, things they didn’t have as children. They also see kids struggling with mental illnesses--something that was a somewhat taboo topic up until the last ten years or so.

No one ever wanted to hear about that when they were kids, so why is everyone talking about it all of a sudden?

Now that it has become a topic of discussion, it is more transparent, and faces a new kind of discrimination: such as men are treated as less for stuggling, and young kids are shown as fakes and “desperate for attention”.

As mental illness finds itself in our discussions, so do questions regarding it. We are currently dealing with this awkward divide in assumption and personal experience. Many people that belong to older generations can find this rise in mental illness difficult to grasp. You can’t see it, it can be difficult to diagnose, and even the medication is something that is disputed. This becomes the first part of the problem: a lack of understanding. Assumptions are made and then perpetuated as truth, which continues to mislead uninformed people. When the assumptions are spoken about more than the actual stories of those who have experience, the scales tip in the wrong direction.

But where do these assumptions come from?

As older generations learning the ways of all our current world technology, things can easily be confusing or frightening. Merritt Roe Smith, in an article called “Technological Determinism in American Culture”, discusses this idea of what is happening to America.

Technological determinism is the idea that technology now drives our culture. That we have lost the reins to the buggy and are now forced to just go where it takes us and admire the view on the way.

I believe this idea is also what has led to the blaming of social media. It is the easiest thing to look at and say, ‘Well, we created social media--it’s a part of our world now, and there’s nothing we can do about that. It’s obviously the cause for all these mental health issues, so now I guess we just need to take away the Internet from our kids to keep them safe. It’s the only choice we have.’ Strict parents often restrict the use of the Internet, do not allow their children to have social media accounts, or monitor them with random checks and enforced restriction policies. Parents think social media is driving the change they see in mental health, so the only method of attack they take is restrict, conceal, and refuse.

This is why this accusation is so harmful. In some cases, making false accusations would have no real consequences, so it’s fine to leave them thinking what they want. But in this sense, there are parents that are seeing these studies and taking them as fact. When a parent makes their own decision about why their child is struggling with a mental illness, they close a very important door. A parent needs to be able to hear and accept what their child is saying to them, or else they will never be able to help them in the way they actually need. A parent will often believe others over their child because they believe the child just doesn’t want to lose their “precious social media” and that they “know best for them”. When a parent believes opinions over their child’s, they can risk isolating them even more.

When one is struggling with mental illness, it can be extremely difficult to reach out for help. They may feel unsafe doing so, feel as though others will not believe them, or be embarrassed by it. One of the most important things you can do is be completely willing to listen--and accept--what they have to say. When you choose to believe a study over the child’s own feelings, you are confirming their fears that they are not being heard.

Many studies have followed the same setup: get a thousand people or so in a certain age group and monitor how many times they open social media. Then, watch how long they use it for, and at the end of it all, ask them how sad they are. There are many flaws with these kinds of studies. The main flaw, though, is the lack of interest in any other factors. Using this method, it would be easy to pin mental illnesses on just about anything. When you focus every study on just this one idea, you push away any other evidence you could find that proposes otherwise.

While it is possible that a certain aspect of the rise in social media can be linked with the rise in mental illness, it becomes dangerous when one declares that it is the only link. Social media may be the most “in your face” aspect of the Internet, but it is far from the most important. As Martin Heidegger once stated, “...the essence of technology is by no means anything technological.” When people attempt to pin down causation on the digital world, they are entirely disregarding this fact. The rise in devices, careers, expectations, independence, and connectivity has forced our most recent generations  to change and adapt in a way no generation before ours ever has. These generations find themselves having to stress over massive decisions at younger and younger ages. As a brief example, we can look at just how drastically our view on a college education has become.

In America, college is seen as vital to a successful life.

In Frank Newport’s article, he states “Seven in 10 American adults believe that a college education is very important, up significantly since the 1970s and 1980s. In 1978, when Gallup first asked the question as part of a Phi Delta Kappa survey, just 36% of Americans considered a college education to be very important.”. The pressure to know what you plan to do with the rest of your life by age seventeen looms at the back of most adolesent’s minds. It’s hard enough to understand yourself at that age, let alone what you want to do day in and day out for decades of your life. And if this pressure wasn’t bad enough, it comes with a ball and chain: the promise of thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt. This pressure is enough to discourage any abled person, and a young kid struggling in their basics to algebra math class can see this future as a death sentence. And yet still, we trudge on, and continue to attend universities, And we do this for no other reason than we see it to be impossible to survive life without it.

When older generations look down on those younger than them, they can’t help but compare their lives. By this age, they had bought a house, By that age, they’d had three children. You’re having a hard time in school? Suck it up, I did it so you can too.

These generations are being raised with the idea that if they are not everything their parents were, they are a failure. And yet, they have been handed down a world of situations that make that impossible. It is hard enough to afford next week’s meal budget, let alone a house. The pressure of understanding what we want to do with our lives is crushing, but we find ourselves sitting in a college classroom anyways.

These constant beat downs on younger generation’s self esteem is a recipe for disaster. It murders motivation, squashes self-confidence, and roots fear into their lives. And yet, whenever these struggles are mentioned by those fighting them, the responses are the same. Grow up! Be an adult! This is life!

But you know what it all probably is?

Those damn phones.

Citations

Gallup, Inc. “Americans Still See College Education as Very Important.” Gallup.com, Gallup, 10 Oct. 2018, https://news.gallup.com/poll/166490/americans-college-education-important.aspx.

Smith, Merritt Roe. “Technological Determinism in American Culture.” Does Technology Drive History? The Dilema of Technological Determinism, The MIT Press, 1994, pp. 3–34.

Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovett (New York, 1977), 4.

[descendorpg]

mw fcs?

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female fcs: josefine frida pettersen, kat mcnamara, freya tingley, cierra ramirez, maia mitchell, yara shahidi, abigail cowen, kathryn newton, sofia carson, laura harrier, aisha dee, adeline rudolph, kiernan shipka, lily james, park shin hye, vanessa morgan, emeraude toubia, keke palmer, alycia debnam carey, jennifer henwick, camila mendes, victoria justice, lana condor, sydney park, arden cho, kiersey clemons, courtney eaton, im yoonah, krystal jung, adelaide kane, lee ji-eun,  lindsey morgan, danielle panabaker, halstons age, chloe bennet, elizabeth olsen, lily collins, diana silvers, ivana baquero, candice patton, eleanor tomlinson, hailee steinfeld, saoirse ronan, poppy drayton, sophie cookson,lucy hale, bae suzy, laura harrier, zoey deutch, olivia holt, danielle rose russell, britt robertson, skyler samuels, kelsey chow, merritt patterson, zendaya coleman, naomi scott, kang mina, stefanie scott, ashley benson, shay mitchell, aja naomi king, lisa tiege, carlson young, willa fitzgerald, haley lu richardson, madelaine petsch, kristin froseth, katie stevens, danielle campbell

MALE FCS:  diego boneta, chance perdomo, jamie blackley, rome flynn, thomas doherty, tommy martinez,dominic sherwood, ross lynch, gavin leatherwood, charles melton, fady elsayed, austin butler, douglas booth, mena massoud, kj apa,  colin ford, benjamin wadsworth, jordan fisher, cody christian, nick robinson, alberto rosende, justice smith, asa butterfield, lucius laviscount,  alfie enoch, gregg sulkin, bill skarsgard, froy gutierrez, ryan potter, jack falahee, marque richardson, avan jogia, alex fitzalan, jack mulhern, alvaro rico, ansel elgort, nat wolff, alex lawther, miles heizer, charlie rowe, jack mulhern, florian regtien, lucas hedges, fawad khan, stephen james, tye sheridan, francois arnaud, alex roe, brenton thwaites, kim woo bin, spencer boldman, alperen duymaz

non-binary: quintessa swindell, indiya moore, lachlan watson, liv hewson, amandla stenberg

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trans: elliot fletcher, hunter schafer

[stopkingobama]

Firearms technology and the original meaning of the Second Amendment

Photo: KAZ Vorpal/Flickr (cc by-sa 2.0)

Gun-control advocates often argue that gun-control laws must be more restrictive than the original meaning of the Second Amendment would allow, because modern firearms are so different from the firearms of the late 18th century. This argument is based on ignorance of the history of firearms. It is true that in 1791 the most common firearms were handguns or long guns that had to be reloaded after every shot. But it is not true that repeating arms, which can fire multiple times without reloading, were unimagined in 1791. To the contrary, repeating arms long predate the 1606 founding of the first English colony in America. As of 1791, repeating arms were available but expensive.

This article explains why the price of repeating arms declined so steeply. Then it describes some of the repeating arms that were already in use when the Second Amendment was ratified, including the 22-shot rifle that was later carried on the Lewis and Clark expedition.

James Madison and Firearm Innovation

One of the men to credit for why repeating arms became much less expensive during the 19th century is James Madison, author of the Second Amendment. During Madison’s presidency (1809-17), Secretary of War James Monroe (who would succeed Madison as president), successfully promoted legislation to foster the development of firearms technology. In particular, the federal armories at Springfield, Mass., and Harpers Ferry, Va., were ordered to invent the means of producing firearms with interchangeable parts.

To function reliably, repeating firearms must have internal components that fit together very precisely — much more precisely than is necessary for single-shot firearms. Before President Madison and Secretary Monroe started the manufacturing revolution, firearms were built one at a time by craftsmen. Making a repeating arm required much more time and expertise than making a single-shot firearm. How to make repeating arms was well-known, but making them at a labor cost the average person could afford was impossible.

Thanks to the technology innovation labs created at Springfield and Harpers Ferry, inventors found ways to manufacture firearms components at a higher rate, and with more consistency for each part. Instead of every part being made by hand, parts were manufactured with machine tools (tools that make other tools). For example, the wooden stocks for rifles could be repetitively manufactured with such precision that any stock from a factory would fit any rifle from the factory, with no need for craftsmen to shave or adjust the stock.

In New England, the Springfield Armory worked with emerging machinists for other consumer products; the exchange of information in this technology network led directly to the Connecticut River Valley becoming a center of American consumer firearms manufacture, and to rapid improvements in the manufacture of many other consumer durables. The story is told in: Ross Thomson, Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in the United States 1790-1865 (2009); Alexander Rose, American Rifle: A Biography (2008); David R. Meyer, Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America (2006); David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 (1985);  Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (1977); Felicia Johnson Deyrup, Arms Makers of the Connecticut Valley: A Regional Study of the Economic Development of the Small Arms Industry, 1798-1870 (1948). By the 1830s, manufacturing uniformity was sufficiently advanced that repeating arms were becoming widely affordable, and no longer just for the wealthy.

Centuries of Repeating Arms

What kind of repeating arms were available before 1815, when the Madison-Monroe mass production innovation program began? The state of the art was the Girandoni air rifle, invented around 1779 for Austrian army sharpshooters. Lewis and Clark would carry a Girandoni on their famous expedition, during the Jefferson administration. The Girandoni could shoot 21 or 22 bullets in .46 or .49 caliber without reloading. Ballistically equal to a firearm, a single shot from the Girandoni could penetrate a one-inch wood plank, or take an elk. (For more on the Girandoni, see my article “The History of Firearms Magazines and Magazine Prohibitions,” 88 Albany L. Rev. 849, 852-53 (2015).)

The first repeaters had been invented about three centuries before. The earliest-known model is a German breech-loading matchlock arquebus from around 1490-1530 with a 10-shot revolving cylinder. M.L. Brown, Firearms in Colonial America: The Impact on History and Technology, 1492-1792, 50 (1980). Henry VIII had a long gun that used a revolving cylinder (a “revolver”) for multiple shots. W.W. Greener, The Gun and Its Development, 81-82 (9th ed. 1910). A 16-round wheel lock dates from about 1580. Kopel, at 852.

Production of repeaters continued in the seventeenth century. Brown, at 105-6 (four-barreled wheel-lock pistol could fire 15 shots in a few seconds); John Nigel George, English Guns and Rifles, 55-58 (1947) (English breech-loading lever-action repeater, and a revolver, made no later than the British Civil War, and perhaps earlier, by an English gun maker).

The first repeaters to be built in large quantities appear to be the 1646 Danish flintlocks that used a pair of tubular magazines, and could fire 30 shots without reloading. Like a modern lever-action rifle, the next shot was made ready by a simple two-step motion of the trigger guard. These guns were produced for the Danish and Dutch armies. Brown, at 106-7.

In Colonial America, repeating arms were available for people who could afford them, or who were skilled enough to make their own. For example, in September 1722, John Pim of Boston entertained some Indians by demonstrating a firearm he had made. Although “loaded but once,” it “was discharged eleven times following, with bullets in the space of two minutes each which went through a double door at fifty yards’ distance.” Samuel Niles, A Summary Historical Narrative of the Wars in New England, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 4th ser., vol. 5, 347 (1837). Pim’s gun may have been a type of the repeating flintlock that became “popular in England from the third quarter of the 17th century,” and was manufactured in Massachusetts starting in the early eighteenth. Harold L. Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America 1526-1783, 215-17 (Dover reprint 2000) (Smithsonian Institution 1956). Another repeating flintlock, invented by Philadelphia’s Joseph Belton, could fire eight shots in three seconds. Idem, 217. Pim also owned a .52 caliber six-shot flintlock revolver, similar to the revolvers that had been made in England since the turn of the century. Brown, 255. A variety of multi-shot pistols from the late eighteenth century have been preserved, holding two to four rounds. Charles Winthrop Sawyer, Firearms in American History: 1600 to 1800, 194-98, 215-16 (1910).

Devastation at Short Range

The repeaters described above were not the most common arms. It would take two decades for the program begun by President Madison to result in repeating arms beginning to become affordable to the middle class. So in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a person who could not afford an expensive repeater, but who wanted to be able to fire more than one bullet without reloading, would often buy a blunderbuss. The blunderbuss was the size of a very large handgun. Its muzzle flared outward slightly, like a bell. This made it easier to load while bouncing in a stagecoach, or on a swaying ship. The blunderbuss could fire either one large projectile, or several at once. Most often it was loaded with about 20 large pellets, and so it was devastating at short range. The name seems an adaptation of the Dutch “donder-buse” or “thunder gun.”

Excellent for self-defense at close quarters, the blunderbuss was of little use for anything else, having an effective range of about 20 yards. Militarily, it was used by sailors to repel boarders. Stagecoach guards and travelers carried blunderbusses, and it was also a common arm for home defense. For more on the blunderbuss, see Brown and George, above.

High-Capacity Printing Presses

No one would dispute that modern arms are much improved from 1791 in terms of reliability, accuracy, range and affordability. But the gap from the 22-shot Girandoni (powerful enough to take an elk) to a modern firearm is pretty small compared with the changes in technology of “the press.” Compared to the one-sheet-at-a-time printing presses of 1791, the steam and rotary presses invented in the 19th century made printing vastly faster — a speed improvement that dwarfs the speed improvement in firearms in the last 500 years. When the First Amendment was written, a skilled printer could produce 250 sheets in two hours. Today, a modern newspaper printing press can produce 70,000 copies of a newspaper (consisting of dozens of sheets) in an hour. Now, with digital publishing, a newspaper article can be read globally within minutes after it is written.

This means that irresponsible media can cause far more harm today than they could in 1791. For example, in 2005, Newsweek magazine published a false story claiming that American personnel at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated Korans belonging to prisoners there. Eventually, Newsweek retracted the story. But the phony story had already spread worldwide, setting off riots in six countries, in which over 30 people were killed. Had Newsweek been using 18th-century printing presses, the false story would have mostly been read by several thousand people in the New York City area, where Newsweek is based. It would been months — if ever — before the Newsweek issue with the false story was read by anyone in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

We do not limit any constitutional right to the technology that existed in 1791. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the court observed:

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35-36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.

This is an accurate statement of constitutional law, but it understates how truly frivolous the argument against modern firearms is. The people who ratified the Bill of Rights certainly did not anticipate the invention centuries later of the Internet or of thermal imaging sensors. The American people of 1791 did not have to anticipate the invention of repeating arms, because such arms had been in existence for centuries.

Republished from the Washington Post.

David B. Kopel

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

[americanlibertypac]

Firearms technology and the original meaning of the Second Amendment

Photo: KAZ Vorpal/Flickr (cc by-sa 2.0)

Gun-control advocates often argue that gun-control laws must be more restrictive than the original meaning of the Second Amendment would allow, because modern firearms are so different from the firearms of the late 18th century. This argument is based on ignorance of the history of firearms. It is true that in 1791 the most common firearms were handguns or long guns that had to be reloaded after every shot. But it is not true that repeating arms, which can fire multiple times without reloading, were unimagined in 1791. To the contrary, repeating arms long predate the 1606 founding of the first English colony in America. As of 1791, repeating arms were available but expensive.

This article explains why the price of repeating arms declined so steeply. Then it describes some of the repeating arms that were already in use when the Second Amendment was ratified, including the 22-shot rifle that was later carried on the Lewis and Clark expedition.

James Madison and Firearm Innovation

One of the men to credit for why repeating arms became much less expensive during the 19th century is James Madison, author of the Second Amendment. During Madison’s presidency (1809-17), Secretary of War James Monroe (who would succeed Madison as president), successfully promoted legislation to foster the development of firearms technology. In particular, the federal armories at Springfield, Mass., and Harpers Ferry, Va., were ordered to invent the means of producing firearms with interchangeable parts.

To function reliably, repeating firearms must have internal components that fit together very precisely — much more precisely than is necessary for single-shot firearms. Before President Madison and Secretary Monroe started the manufacturing revolution, firearms were built one at a time by craftsmen. Making a repeating arm required much more time and expertise than making a single-shot firearm. How to make repeating arms was well-known, but making them at a labor cost the average person could afford was impossible.

Thanks to the technology innovation labs created at Springfield and Harpers Ferry, inventors found ways to manufacture firearms components at a higher rate, and with more consistency for each part. Instead of every part being made by hand, parts were manufactured with machine tools (tools that make other tools). For example, the wooden stocks for rifles could be repetitively manufactured with such precision that any stock from a factory would fit any rifle from the factory, with no need for craftsmen to shave or adjust the stock.

In New England, the Springfield Armory worked with emerging machinists for other consumer products; the exchange of information in this technology network led directly to the Connecticut River Valley becoming a center of American consumer firearms manufacture, and to rapid improvements in the manufacture of many other consumer durables. The story is told in: Ross Thomson, Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in the United States 1790-1865 (2009); Alexander Rose, American Rifle: A Biography (2008); David R. Meyer, Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America (2006); David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 (1985);  Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (1977); Felicia Johnson Deyrup, Arms Makers of the Connecticut Valley: A Regional Study of the Economic Development of the Small Arms Industry, 1798-1870 (1948). By the 1830s, manufacturing uniformity was sufficiently advanced that repeating arms were becoming widely affordable, and no longer just for the wealthy.

Centuries of Repeating Arms

What kind of repeating arms were available before 1815, when the Madison-Monroe mass production innovation program began? The state of the art was the Girandoni air rifle, invented around 1779 for Austrian army sharpshooters. Lewis and Clark would carry a Girandoni on their famous expedition, during the Jefferson administration. The Girandoni could shoot 21 or 22 bullets in .46 or .49 caliber without reloading. Ballistically equal to a firearm, a single shot from the Girandoni could penetrate a one-inch wood plank, or take an elk. (For more on the Girandoni, see my article “The History of Firearms Magazines and Magazine Prohibitions,” 88 Albany L. Rev. 849, 852-53 (2015).)

The first repeaters had been invented about three centuries before. The earliest-known model is a German breech-loading matchlock arquebus from around 1490-1530 with a 10-shot revolving cylinder. M.L. Brown, Firearms in Colonial America: The Impact on History and Technology, 1492-1792, 50 (1980). Henry VIII had a long gun that used a revolving cylinder (a “revolver”) for multiple shots. W.W. Greener, The Gun and Its Development, 81-82 (9th ed. 1910). A 16-round wheel lock dates from about 1580. Kopel, at 852.

Production of repeaters continued in the seventeenth century. Brown, at 105-6 (four-barreled wheel-lock pistol could fire 15 shots in a few seconds); John Nigel George, English Guns and Rifles, 55-58 (1947) (English breech-loading lever-action repeater, and a revolver, made no later than the British Civil War, and perhaps earlier, by an English gun maker).

The first repeaters to be built in large quantities appear to be the 1646 Danish flintlocks that used a pair of tubular magazines, and could fire 30 shots without reloading. Like a modern lever-action rifle, the next shot was made ready by a simple two-step motion of the trigger guard. These guns were produced for the Danish and Dutch armies. Brown, at 106-7.

In Colonial America, repeating arms were available for people who could afford them, or who were skilled enough to make their own. For example, in September 1722, John Pim of Boston entertained some Indians by demonstrating a firearm he had made. Although “loaded but once,” it “was discharged eleven times following, with bullets in the space of two minutes each which went through a double door at fifty yards’ distance.” Samuel Niles, A Summary Historical Narrative of the Wars in New England, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 4th ser., vol. 5, 347 (1837). Pim’s gun may have been a type of the repeating flintlock that became “popular in England from the third quarter of the 17th century,” and was manufactured in Massachusetts starting in the early eighteenth. Harold L. Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America 1526-1783, 215-17 (Dover reprint 2000) (Smithsonian Institution 1956). Another repeating flintlock, invented by Philadelphia’s Joseph Belton, could fire eight shots in three seconds. Idem, 217. Pim also owned a .52 caliber six-shot flintlock revolver, similar to the revolvers that had been made in England since the turn of the century. Brown, 255. A variety of multi-shot pistols from the late eighteenth century have been preserved, holding two to four rounds. Charles Winthrop Sawyer, Firearms in American History: 1600 to 1800, 194-98, 215-16 (1910).

Devastation at Short Range

The repeaters described above were not the most common arms. It would take two decades for the program begun by President Madison to result in repeating arms beginning to become affordable to the middle class. So in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a person who could not afford an expensive repeater, but who wanted to be able to fire more than one bullet without reloading, would often buy a blunderbuss. The blunderbuss was the size of a very large handgun. Its muzzle flared outward slightly, like a bell. This made it easier to load while bouncing in a stagecoach, or on a swaying ship. The blunderbuss could fire either one large projectile, or several at once. Most often it was loaded with about 20 large pellets, and so it was devastating at short range. The name seems an adaptation of the Dutch “donder-buse” or “thunder gun.”

Excellent for self-defense at close quarters, the blunderbuss was of little use for anything else, having an effective range of about 20 yards. Militarily, it was used by sailors to repel boarders. Stagecoach guards and travelers carried blunderbusses, and it was also a common arm for home defense. For more on the blunderbuss, see Brown and George, above.

High-Capacity Printing Presses

No one would dispute that modern arms are much improved from 1791 in terms of reliability, accuracy, range and affordability. But the gap from the 22-shot Girandoni (powerful enough to take an elk) to a modern firearm is pretty small compared with the changes in technology of “the press.” Compared to the one-sheet-at-a-time printing presses of 1791, the steam and rotary presses invented in the 19th century made printing vastly faster — a speed improvement that dwarfs the speed improvement in firearms in the last 500 years. When the First Amendment was written, a skilled printer could produce 250 sheets in two hours. Today, a modern newspaper printing press can produce 70,000 copies of a newspaper (consisting of dozens of sheets) in an hour. Now, with digital publishing, a newspaper article can be read globally within minutes after it is written.

This means that irresponsible media can cause far more harm today than they could in 1791. For example, in 2005, Newsweek magazine published a false story claiming that American personnel at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated Korans belonging to prisoners there. Eventually, Newsweek retracted the story. But the phony story had already spread worldwide, setting off riots in six countries, in which over 30 people were killed. Had Newsweek been using 18th-century printing presses, the false story would have mostly been read by several thousand people in the New York City area, where Newsweek is based. It would been months — if ever — before the Newsweek issue with the false story was read by anyone in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

We do not limit any constitutional right to the technology that existed in 1791. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the court observed:

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35-36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.

This is an accurate statement of constitutional law, but it understates how truly frivolous the argument against modern firearms is. The people who ratified the Bill of Rights certainly did not anticipate the invention centuries later of the Internet or of thermal imaging sensors. The American people of 1791 did not have to anticipate the invention of repeating arms, because such arms had been in existence for centuries.

Republished from the Washington Post.

David B. Kopel

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

[s5078305-blog]

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The franklin institution, TFI., 2019.  WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AR, VR, AND MR? https://www.fi.edu/difference-between-ar-vr-and-mr

Winner/ langdon, LW., 1997. Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-control as a Theme in Political Thought., 65  

Bardi/ Jeo,  JB., 2019. What is virtual reality. [online] https://www.marxentlabs.com/what-is-virtual-reality/

Makeuseof, MUO., 2017. History of Pokémon: games, cards and more. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/history-pokemon/

Marasigan/ Mark, MM,. 2016.  POKEMON GO DEMOLISHES FIVE GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS IN FIRST MONTH. [ONLINE] https://mmos.com/news/pokemon-go-demolishes-five-guinness-world-records-first-month

Knowledge Wharton high School., 2016. Reality Check: The Technology Behind “Pokemon Go” [online] https://kwhs.wharton.upenn.edu/2016/08/pokemon-go-technology-behind-merging-digital-physical-world/

Baudrillard/ Jean, JB., 1981. University of Michigan Press. France: Éditions Galilée.

IMBD, 1999. The Matrx plot. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/plotsummary

Plunkett/ Luke, LP, 2015. The banned Pokémon episode that gave kids seizures. Retrieved from https://kotaku.com/the-banned-pokemon-episode-that-gave-children-seizures-5757570

Flint/ Hanna, HF, 2015. This Pok��mon episode was banned because it caused seizures in 700 Japanese children. Retrieved from https://metro.co.uk/2015/10/21/this-pokemon-episode-was-banned-because-it-caused-seizures-in-700-japanese-children-5452521/

Robinson/ Andrew AR, 2015. An A to Z of Theory | Jean Baudrillard: Hyperreality and Implosion. Retrieved from  https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-9/

Hayles, N. Katherine, N.KH., 1991. The Borders of Madness. Science Fiction Studies, 18(3), 321-323. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240084

Nozick/ Robert, RN., 2001. Anarchy, State and Utopia. New Ed edition.  England: Wiley-Blackwell.

Resnick/ Brian, BR., 2019. Have smartphones really destroyed a generation? We don’t know. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/2/20/18210498/smartphones-tech-social-media-teens-depression-anxiety-research

Fader/ Sarah, SF., 2018. Social Media Obsession And Anxiety. https://adaa.org/social-media-obsession

Miller/ Caroline, CM.,  https://childmind.org/article/is-social-media-use-causing-depression/

[georgiapioneers]

Chatham Co. NC Genealogies and Histories #northcarolinapioneers

Images of Chatham County Wills and Estates

Chatham County was established in 1771 from Orange County, having been named for William Pitt in 1759, the first Earl of Chatham. It was Pitt who served as the British Prime Minister from 1766 to 1768 and opposed harsh colonial policies. The earliest known settlers were Quakers from England who settled along the Haw and Eno rivers. In 1907, parts of Chatham County and Moore County were combined to form Lee County. The county seat is in Pittsboro, North Carolina and Chatham County is part of the Durham-Chapel Hill area.Among the first settlers were the families of Armistead, Alston, Dodd, Kemp, Edwards, Womack, Brewer, Lambeth, Taylor, Fooshee, Waddell, and Patrick.Chatham County Probate Records available to members of North Carolina Pioneers Images of Wills and Estates 1798 to 1819 Alston, James to Phillip Alston (deed) | Babb, Moses | Bagley, , Henry | Barbe, Goin | Bennett, , James | Bishop, Richard | Booker, John | Booth, Moses | Branch, Edmond | Branch, Edmund | Brantly, John | Brantley, Joseph | Brasington, Joseph | Braxton, Thomas | Bray, , Henry | Brewer, Jeremiah Brooks, Thomas | Brown, Daniel | Brown, Joseph | Brown, Nancy | Bryant, Elizabeth | Bryant, Obediah | Bullard, , James | Burnett, Alexander | Burns, John Sr. | Bynum, Luke | Carniss, Matthew | Carrell, Starling | Carter, Samuel | Cate, Richard | Chapman, David | Collen, John | Cook, Abraham | Cook, , Henry | Cook, John M. | Copeland, , James | Coskatt, John | Cotton, Seth | Cox, William | Crow, John | Crutchfield, Martin | Culberson, Andrew. | Culberson, Samuel | Dabney, John and Thomas Perkins to William Vestal | Dark, Joseph Sr. | David, Richard | Davis, John | Denton, , James | Doan, John | Dorsett, Travis Douglas, John | Dowd, Judith | Dowd, Richard | Dowdy, Thomas | Duffy, William | Duly, William | Edwards, William | Emerson, Margret | Evans, Ruth | Farrar, John | Farrar, Milly | Ferrington, John | Fooshee, Joseph | Fooshee, Simon | Fuller, , Henry | Futterlok, Elizabeth | Gillimore, Samuel | Glasson, Joseph | Glover, Benjamin | Glover, Thomas | Goodwin, Gideon | Gotarton, William | Grady, Thomas | Granger, Thomas | Graves, William | Guthrie, William | Hadley, Joshua Sr. | Hall, John | Haynes, Andrew. | Headin, John | Henderson, Angeline | Hines, Boling | Hinson, James from Sarah Ronalds | Hinton, Joseph | Hobson, Joseph | Holaday, , Henry | Hollowell, Reubin | Hunter, Elisha | Hurley, Amos | Jenks, Joseph | Jones, Elizabeth | Kinchen, Alexander | Kirby, , James | Kirk, George | Lacy, Ann | Lacy, Philemon Sr. | Lea, Joseph | Leavens, Richmond | Ledbetter, William | Lucas, George | Lucas, William | Marley, Benjamin | Marsh, Robert | Marshall, Benjamin | Marshall, John | Martin, Clementine | Martin, George | Martin, William | Martin, Zachariah | Massey, , James | Matthews, Clybron | May, Joseph | McDaniel, John | McIver, Duncan | McManus, Lawrence | McSwan, John | Meacham, William Sr. | Medlin, Michael | Milliken, Quinton | Minter, John Sr. | Moffit, Hugh | Montgomery, John | Moody, William | Moon, , James | Moon, John | Morgan, Joseph | Odean, Thomas | Pace, Richard | Parker, Robert | Parish, Davis | Parrish, Robert | Partridge, Sarah | Patterson, , James | Pattmon, Mark | Pearce, Richard | Peoples, Hugh Piggott, John | Pike, Lydia | Pilkinton, John | Poe, Robert | Poe, William | Powers, David | Powers, John | Prince, Nicholas | Pritchet, Thomas | Purvis, Robert | Pyle, John | Ragland, Thomas to James Alston (deed) | Ratcliff, John | Rayland, William | Reynolds, Florence | | Ritch, Jacob | Rives, Seley | Rives, Thomas | Rogers, Josiah | Rogers, William | Rows, John | Self, Parish | Sellars, , James | Smith, John | Smith, William | Springfield, John | Staley, Christian | Stinson, Aaron | Stokes, Thomas to Obediah Bryant | Stone, Francis | Straughan, Richard | Tabor, Thomas | Teague, Bunsby | Teague, Moses | Temples, William | Thompson, John | Tomblinson, John | Tripp, John | Uttey, William | Vestal, Thomas | Vestal, William | Wade, Edmond | Ward, Rachel | Whinnery, Robert | White, John | White, John (2) | White, Katherine White, Thomas | Whitehead, Arthur | Whitehead, Joseph | Wilkins, Alexander | Williams, A. | Williams, Burwell Williams, John | Willis, William | Willson, Michael | Wilson, Rebecca | Winter, Daniel | Wistray, Benjamin | Womack, John Sr. | Womble, , James | Womble, Thomas Wills and Estates 1818 to 1833Armistead, Alexander | Atkinson, John A. | Atkinson, John | Avent, John | Avent, July Ann | Barbee, Betsy | Barbie, Gray | Beasley, Elizabeth | Bell, Thomas | Bland, John | Booker, , James | Branson, Joseph | Branson, Levi | Brantly, William | Branton, William | Brewer, Samuel | Brewer, Solomon | Brooks, Isaac Buchannan, Elizabeth | Buckanon, Sarah | Buckner, Jesse Burns, Thomas | Burns, William | Bush, Mary | Cate, Richard | Caveness, Matthew Cole, Elizabeth | Cole, Thomas | Cole, William Sr. | Copeland, Mark | Cotten, Rhoderick | Curl, William | Denny, Anderson Dismukes, George | Dixon, George | Dixon, Nathan Dixon, Sarah | Dixon, Solomon | Dixon, Thomas | Dodd, William | Edwards, , James | Edwards, Joshua Sr. | Fann, Rachel | Farrar, Peter | Farrar, William | Fooshee, Happy | Fooshee, Joseph | Fields, , James | Garner, , James | Gillam, William | Glass, Josiah | Glass, William | Gunter, Richard | Guthrie, Cleburn | Hackary, William | Hadley, Jane | Hamblett, William | Harris, Benjamin | Henderson, John | Hinshaw, Joseph | Hinsley, William | Hobson, Stephen | Holaday, Samuel | Horton, Benjamin | Horton, Jesse | Horton, William | Howard, Dorcas | Johnson, Jesse | Jones, , James | Justice, David | Kemp, Joseph T. | Kemp, Josiah | Lawrence, Elizabeth S. | Leighleman, John | Lindley, Thomas | Lucas, Mary | MacIver, John | Manly, Basil | Mann, Thomas | Martin, , James | Mazey, John | McCan, Mary | McDaniel, , James | McInnis, Miles | McIver, Evander | McKenzie, Murdock | McQueen, Archibald S. | McQueen, Murds | Mebane, John | Merritt, George | Merritt, William | Milton, David | Minter, Joseph | Moran, William | Moss, John | O'Kelly, Elizabeth | O'Kelly, , James | O'Kelly, William | Oldham, John | Pattishall, William | Penny, Charles | Phillips, William | Poe, Stephen | Powell, Eliza | Powell, Thomas | Prince, William | Purvis, George | Quackenbush, , Henry | Ramsey, Ambrose | Ramsey, Eliza | Ramsey, John | Richardson, Isaac | Riddle, John | Roberts, Ishmael | Roe, Solomon | Rollings, John | Sanders, A. | Sanders, Benjamin | Scarborough, Miles Sewter, , Henry | Smith, Ambrose | Smith, Lemuel | Stedman, Wiinship | Stone, Ann | Stone, Thomas | Taylor, George W.| Taylor, , James | Taylor, James (1829) Teague, David | Tyson, Cornelius | Vestal, Benjamin | Vestal, David | Walden, John C. | Ward, Robert | Ward, William | Watson, Robert | West, Ignatius | West, Thomas | Wester, Mary | White, John | White, Stephen | Wicker, Thomas | Willett, , James | Willis, Francis | Willis, William | Wilson, Stephen | Wistory, Elizabeth | Woody, Hugh Images of Wills and Estates 1834 to 1857Adcock, Joshua | Albright, William | Allen, John | Allen, Peter | Alston, Aran | Alston, Gideon Alston, John | Alston, Nathaniel | Armistead, Larry | Armistead, Westward | Atkinland, Richard | Bain, Francis | Barham, William | Baute, Randolph Bay, Thomas | Bell, Elijah | Bell, Mary | Benett, Solomon | Blande, , James | Booker, Phylis | Boon, Raford | Bowen, William | Bray, Harman | Bray, , Henry | Bray, , James | Bray, William | Brewer, John | Brewer, Nathan Bridges, Joseph | Bright, Simon | Brooke, Larkin | Brooks, Joab | Brooks, Richard | Brown, Ebenezer Brown, Nancy | Brown, William | Bryan, Aaron | Bryan, Reddin | Bunn, John | Burchard, Elizabeth | Burchard, Jedekiah | Burgess, John | Burnett, Isaiah| Burns, B. J. | Burns, , James | Carter, John | Chawney, Joshua | Cook, Mary | Cooper, , James | Cross, Parish | Crump, Martha | Crutchfield, Thomas | Dane, George | Daniel, Mary | Dark, Susannah | Dickens, Thomas | Dison, Benjamin | Dodd, Benjamin | Dodd, Herbert | Dodd, , James | Dorsett, John | Dowd, Richard | Dowd, Samuel | Drake, Richard | Drake, Sally | Drake, William | Edwards, David | Edwards, Hanah | Edwards, Hugh | Edwards, Isaac | Edwards, , James | Edwards, Joel | Edwards, Stokes | Emmerson, Eli | Evans, Anthony | Evans, Richard | Farrah, Powell | Ferguson, Archibald | Fooshee, Bethany | Foushee, Nelly | Fooshee, Simon | Fooshee, William | Fox, David | Fox, John | Freeman, Lewis | Garner, William | Gee, George | Gilden, , Henry | Gilmore, Stephen | Goodwin, , Henry | Gunter, Isham | Gunter, John | Guthrie, William | Hackney, Joseph | Hackney, Robert | Hadley, Jacob | Hammond, William | Hanks, John | Harland, William | Harman, George | Hartsoe, Isaac | Hash, John | Hatley, Uriah | Hattey, Abner | Haughton, John | Headen, Dolley | Headen, Isaac | Heathcock, Patrick | Henry, George | Herndon, Reuben | Hill, Jeremiah | Hinshaw, Benjamin | Hinshaw, Nancy | Hinshaw, Thomas | Hinshaw, William | Hinton, A. J. | Hobson, Joseph | Holland, Sampson | Holland, Wiley | Hodges, Joab | Holmes, Lewis | Horne, James | Horton, James | Jacks, Job | Jackson, Samuel | Jean, Barber | Jenkins, Sanford | Jinkins, Sanford | Johnson, Daniel | Johnson, John | Johnson, Michael Sr. | Johnston, John | Jones, Alston | Jones, Edmund | Jones, Susan | Jordan, William | Justice, Susannah | Kelly, Mary | Kemp, Daniel | Kemp, Joseph | Kemp, Susannah | Lamberly, John | Lambeth, Rachael Lambeth, Thomas | Lassater, Bennett Lassater, Thomas | Lassatar, William | Lindley, , James | Lindley, Joshua Mann, Isham | Mann, Joseph | Marcus, Jane | Marks, Margaret | Marsh, Susan | Masey, Sally | Mason, William | McBride, Archibald | McMasters, William | Mebane, John | Moody, Benjamin | Moon, B.| Moore, J. | Moore, Rebecca | Morgan, Joseph | Neal, , James | Owen, Winnifred Palmer, Robert | Patrick, William | Pattishall, John | Peoples, John | Perry, John | Perry, Turner | Pickett, Simeon | Pickington, Samuel | Poe, Rebecca | Pugh, Thomas | Ridell, Cato | Riggsby, Phebe | Rives, Edward | Rush, Elizabeth | Scott, Stephen | Siler, Philip Sr. | Simon, Whitney | Small, Joseph | Snipes, John | Snipes, Thomas | Stanton, Willis | Stewart, Alexander | Stillman, Robert P. | Stinson, Robert | Stone, John | Stout, William | Strom, Alston | Strangham, Bailey | Swann, Sarah | Taylor, Rowling | Taylor, Sarah | Terry, Hannah | Terry, , James | Thomas, Benjamin | Thompson, George | Toomer, John | Torance, Sarah Ann | Uttey, Gabriel | Vistal, David | Waddell, Sarah | Ward, Martha | Watson, Elizabeth | Watson, John | Webster, Elizabeth | Welch, , Henry | Welch, William | Whiteheade, John | Whitner, Margaret | Wickson, Milly | Williams, Delpha | Williams, George | Williams, John | Williams, Richard | Williams, Thomas | Womack, Green | Womack, John | Womble, Catharine | Workman, Thomas  Find your Ancestors Records on North Carolina Pioneers SUBSCRIBE HERE

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[nancyedimick]

Firearms technology and the original meaning of the Second Amendment

Gun-control advocates often argue that gun-control laws must be more restrictive than the original meaning of the Second Amendment would allow, because modern firearms are so different from the firearms of the late 18th century. This argument is based on ignorance of the history of firearms. It is true that in 1791 the most common firearms were handguns or long guns that had to be reloaded after every shot. But it is not true that repeating arms, which can fire multiple times without reloading, were unimagined in 1791. To the contrary, repeating arms long predate the 1606 founding of the first English colony in America. As of 1791, repeating arms were available but expensive.

This article explains why the price of repeating arms declined so steeply. Then it describes some of the repeating arms that were already in use when the Second Amendment was ratified, including the 22-shot rifle that was later carried on the Lewis and Clark expedition.

One of the men to credit for why repeating arms became much less expensive during the 19th century is James Madison, author of the Second Amendment. During Madison’s presidency (1809-17), Secretary of War James Monroe (who would succeed Madison as president), successfully promoted legislation to foster the development of firearms technology. In particular, the federal armories at Springfield, Mass., and Harpers Ferry, Va., were ordered to invent the means of producing firearms with interchangeable parts.

To function reliably, repeating firearms must have internal components that fit together very precisely — much more precisely than is necessary for single-shot firearms. Before President Madison and Secretary Monroe started the manufacturing revolution, firearms were built one at a time by craftsmen. Making a repeating arm required much more time and expertise than making a single-shot firearm. How to make repeating arms was well-known, but making them at a labor cost the average person could afford was impossible.

Thanks to the technology innovation labs created at Springfield and Harpers Ferry, inventors found ways to manufacture firearms components at a higher rate, and with more consistency for each part. Instead of every part being made by hand, parts were manufactured with machine tools (tools that make other tools). For example, the wooden stocks for rifles could be repetitively manufactured with such precision that any stock from a factory would fit any rifle from the factory, with no need for craftsmen to shave or adjust the stock.

In New England, the Springfield Armory worked with emerging machinists for other consumer products; the exchange of information in this technology network led directly to the Connecticut River Valley becoming a center of American consumer firearms manufacture, and to rapid improvements in the manufacture of many other consumer durables. The story is told in: Ross Thomson, Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in the United States 1790-1865 (2009); Alexander Rose, American Rifle: A Biography (2008); David R. Meyer, Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America (2006); David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 (1985);  Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (1977); Felicia Johnson Deyrup, Arms Makers of the Connecticut Valley: A Regional Study of the Economic Development of the Small Arms Industry, 1798-1870 (1948). By the 1830s, manufacturing uniformity was sufficiently advanced that repeating arms were becoming widely affordable, and no longer just for the wealthy.

What kind of repeating arms were available before 1815, when the Madison-Monroe mass production innovation program began? The state of the art was the Girandoni air rifle, invented around 1779 for Austrian army sharpshooters. Lewis and Clark would carry a Girandoni on their famous expedition, during the Jefferson administration. The Girandoni could shoot 21 or 22 bullets in .46 or .49 caliber without reloading. Ballistically equal to a firearm, a single shot from the Girandoni could penetrate a one-inch wood plank, or take an elk. (For more on the Girandoni, see my article “The History of Firearms Magazines and Magazine Prohibitions,” 88 Albany L. Rev. 849, 852-53 (2015).)

The first repeaters had been invented about three centuries before. The earliest-known model is a German breech-loading matchlock arquebus from around 1490-1530 with a 10-shot revolving cylinder. M.L. Brown, Firearms in Colonial America: The Impact on History and Technology, 1492-1792, 50 (1980). Henry VIII had a long gun that used a revolving cylinder (a “revolver”) for multiple shots. W.W. Greener, The Gun and Its Development, 81-82 (9th ed. 1910). A 16-round wheel lock dates from about 1580. Kopel, at 852.

Production of repeaters continued in the seventeenth century. Brown, at 105-6 (four-barreled wheel-lock pistol could fire 15 shots in a few seconds); John Nigel George, English Guns and Rifles, 55-58 (1947) (English breech-loading lever-action repeater, and a revolver, made no later than the British Civil War, and perhaps earlier, by an English gun maker).

The first repeaters to be built in large quantities appear to be the 1646 Danish flintlocks that used a pair of tubular magazines, and could fire 30 shots without reloading. Like a modern lever-action rifle, the next shot was made ready by a simple two-step motion of the trigger guard. These guns were produced for the Danish and Dutch armies. Brown, at 106-7.

In Colonial America, repeating arms were available for people who could afford them, or who were skilled enough to make their own. For example, in September 1722, John Pim of Boston entertained some Indians by demonstrating a firearm he had made. Although “loaded but once,” it “was discharged eleven times following, with bullets in the space of two minutes each which went through a double door at fifty yards’ distance.” Samuel Niles, A Summary Historical Narrative of the Wars in New England, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 4th ser., vol. 5, 347 (1837). Pim’s gun may have been a type of the repeating flintlock that became “popular in England from the third quarter of the 17th century,” and was manufactured in Massachusetts starting in the early eighteenth. Harold L. Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America 1526-1783, 215-17 (Dover reprint 2000) (Smithsonian Institution 1956). Another repeating flintlock, invented by Philadelphia’s Joseph Belton, could fire eight shots in three seconds. Idem, 217. Pim also owned a .52 caliber six-shot flintlock revolver, similar to the revolvers that had been made in England since the turn of the century. Brown, 255. A variety of multi-shot pistols from the late eighteenth century have been preserved, holding two to four rounds. Charles Winthrop Sawyer, Firearms in American History: 1600 to 1800, 194-98, 215-16 (1910).

The repeaters described above were not the most common arms. It would take two decades for the program begun by President Madison to result in repeating arms beginning to become affordable to the middle class. So in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a person who could not afford an expensive repeater, but who wanted to be able to fire more than one bullet without reloading, would often buy a blunderbuss. The blunderbuss was the size of a very large handgun. Its muzzle flared outward slightly, like a bell. This made it easier to load while bouncing in a stagecoach, or on a swaying ship. The blunderbuss could fire either one large projectile, or several at once. Most often it was loaded with about 20 large pellets, and so it was devastating at short range. The name seems an adaptation of the Dutch “donder-buse” or “thunder gun.”

Excellent for self-defense at close quarters, the blunderbuss was of little use for anything else, having an effective range of about 20 yards. Militarily, it was used by sailors to repel boarders. Stagecoach guards and travelers carried blunderbusses, and it was also a common arm for home defense. For more on the blunderbuss, see Brown and George, above.

No one would dispute that modern arms are much improved from 1791 in terms of reliability, accuracy, range and affordability. But the gap from the 22-shot Girandoni (powerful enough to take an elk) to a modern firearm is pretty small compared with the changes in technology of “the press.” Compared to the one-sheet-at-a-time printing presses of 1791, the steam and rotary presses invented in the 19th century made printing vastly faster — a speed improvement that dwarfs the speed improvement in firearms in the last 500 years. When the First Amendment was written, a skilled printer could produce 250 sheets in two hours. Today, a modern newspaper printing press can produce 70,000 copies of a newspaper (consisting of dozens of sheets) in an hour. Now, with digital publishing, a newspaper article can be read globally within minutes after it is written.

This means that irresponsible media can cause far more harm today than they could in 1791. For example, in 2005, Newsweek magazine published a false story claiming that American personnel at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated Korans belonging to prisoners there. Eventually, Newsweek retracted the story. But the phony story had already spread worldwide, setting off riots in six countries, in which over 30 people were killed. Had Newsweek been using 18th-century printing presses, the false story would have mostly been read by several thousand people in the New York City area, where Newsweek is based. It would been months — if ever — before the Newsweek issue with the false story was read by anyone in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

We do not limit any constitutional right to the technology that existed in 1791. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the court observed:

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35-36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.

This is an accurate statement of constitutional law, but it understates how truly frivolous the argument against modern firearms is. The people who ratified the Bill of Rights certainly did not anticipate the invention centuries later of the Internet or of thermal imaging sensors. The American people of 1791 did not have to anticipate the invention of repeating arms, because such arms had been in existence for centuries.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/03/firearms-technology-and-the-original-meaning-of-the-second-amendment/

[wolfandpravato]

Firearms technology and the original meaning of the Second Amendment

Gun-control advocates often argue that gun-control laws must be more restrictive than the original meaning of the Second Amendment would allow, because modern firearms are so different from the firearms of the late 18th century. This argument is based on ignorance of the history of firearms. It is true that in 1791 the most common firearms were handguns or long guns that had to be reloaded after every shot. But it is not true that repeating arms, which can fire multiple times without reloading, were unimagined in 1791. To the contrary, repeating arms long predate the 1606 founding of the first English colony in America. As of 1791, repeating arms were available but expensive.

This article explains why the price of repeating arms declined so steeply. Then it describes some of the repeating arms that were already in use when the Second Amendment was ratified, including the 22-shot rifle that was later carried on the Lewis and Clark expedition.

One of the men to credit for why repeating arms became much less expensive during the 19th century is James Madison, author of the Second Amendment. During Madison’s presidency (1809-17), Secretary of War James Monroe (who would succeed Madison as president), successfully promoted legislation to foster the development of firearms technology. In particular, the federal armories at Springfield, Mass., and Harpers Ferry, Va., were ordered to invent the means of producing firearms with interchangeable parts.

To function reliably, repeating firearms must have internal components that fit together very precisely — much more precisely than is necessary for single-shot firearms. Before President Madison and Secretary Monroe started the manufacturing revolution, firearms were built one at a time by craftsmen. Making a repeating arm required much more time and expertise than making a single-shot firearm. How to make repeating arms was well-known, but making them at a labor cost the average person could afford was impossible.

Thanks to the technology innovation labs created at Springfield and Harpers Ferry, inventors found ways to manufacture firearms components at a higher rate, and with more consistency for each part. Instead of every part being made by hand, parts were manufactured with machine tools (tools that make other tools). For example, the wooden stocks for rifles could be repetitively manufactured with such precision that any stock from a factory would fit any rifle from the factory, with no need for craftsmen to shave or adjust the stock.

In New England, the Springfield Armory worked with emerging machinists for other consumer products; the exchange of information in this technology network led directly to the Connecticut River Valley becoming a center of American consumer firearms manufacture, and to rapid improvements in the manufacture of many other consumer durables. The story is told in: Ross Thomson, Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in the United States 1790-1865 (2009); Alexander Rose, American Rifle: A Biography (2008); David R. Meyer, Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America (2006); David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 (1985);  Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (1977); Felicia Johnson Deyrup, Arms Makers of the Connecticut Valley: A Regional Study of the Economic Development of the Small Arms Industry, 1798-1870 (1948). By the 1830s, manufacturing uniformity was sufficiently advanced that repeating arms were becoming widely affordable, and no longer just for the wealthy.

What kind of repeating arms were available before 1815, when the Madison-Monroe mass production innovation program began? The state of the art was the Girandoni air rifle, invented around 1779 for Austrian army sharpshooters. Lewis and Clark would carry a Girandoni on their famous expedition, during the Jefferson administration. The Girandoni could shoot 21 or 22 bullets in .46 or .49 caliber without reloading. Ballistically equal to a firearm, a single shot from the Girandoni could penetrate a one-inch wood plank, or take an elk. (For more on the Girandoni, see my article “The History of Firearms Magazines and Magazine Prohibitions,” 88 Albany L. Rev. 849, 852-53 (2015).)

The first repeaters had been invented about three centuries before. The earliest-known model is a German breech-loading matchlock arquebus from around 1490-1530 with a 10-shot revolving cylinder. M.L. Brown, Firearms in Colonial America: The Impact on History and Technology, 1492-1792, 50 (1980). Henry VIII had a long gun that used a revolving cylinder (a “revolver”) for multiple shots. W.W. Greener, The Gun and Its Development, 81-82 (9th ed. 1910). A 16-round wheel lock dates from about 1580. Kopel, at 852.

Production of repeaters continued in the seventeenth century. Brown, at 105-6 (four-barreled wheel-lock pistol could fire 15 shots in a few seconds); John Nigel George, English Guns and Rifles, 55-58 (1947) (English breech-loading lever-action repeater, and a revolver, made no later than the British Civil War, and perhaps earlier, by an English gun maker).

The first repeaters to be built in large quantities appear to be the 1646 Danish flintlocks that used a pair of tubular magazines, and could fire 30 shots without reloading. Like a modern lever-action rifle, the next shot was made ready by a simple two-step motion of the trigger guard. These guns were produced for the Danish and Dutch armies. Brown, at 106-7.

In Colonial America, repeating arms were available for people who could afford them, or who were skilled enough to make their own. For example, in September 1722, John Pim of Boston entertained some Indians by demonstrating a firearm he had made. Although “loaded but once,” it “was discharged eleven times following, with bullets in the space of two minutes each which went through a double door at fifty yards’ distance.” Samuel Niles, A Summary Historical Narrative of the Wars in New England, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 4th ser., vol. 5, 347 (1837). Pim’s gun may have been a type of the repeating flintlock that became “popular in England from the third quarter of the 17th century,” and was manufactured in Massachusetts starting in the early eighteenth. Harold L. Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America 1526-1783, 215-17 (Dover reprint 2000) (Smithsonian Institution 1956). Another repeating flintlock, invented by Philadelphia’s Joseph Belton, could fire eight shots in three seconds. Idem, 217. Pim also owned a .52 caliber six-shot flintlock revolver, similar to the revolvers that had been made in England since the turn of the century. Brown, 255. A variety of multi-shot pistols from the late eighteenth century have been preserved, holding two to four rounds. Charles Winthrop Sawyer, Firearms in American History: 1600 to 1800, 194-98, 215-16 (1910).

The repeaters described above were not the most common arms. It would take two decades for the program begun by President Madison to result in repeating arms beginning to become affordable to the middle class. So in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a person who could not afford an expensive repeater, but who wanted to be able to fire more than one bullet without reloading, would often buy a blunderbuss. The blunderbuss was the size of a very large handgun. Its muzzle flared outward slightly, like a bell. This made it easier to load while bouncing in a stagecoach, or on a swaying ship. The blunderbuss could fire either one large projectile, or several at once. Most often it was loaded with about 20 large pellets, and so it was devastating at short range. The name seems an adaptation of the Dutch “donder-buse” or “thunder gun.”

Excellent for self-defense at close quarters, the blunderbuss was of little use for anything else, having an effective range of about 20 yards. Militarily, it was used by sailors to repel boarders. Stagecoach guards and travelers carried blunderbusses, and it was also a common arm for home defense. For more on the blunderbuss, see Brown and George, above.

No one would dispute that modern arms are much improved from 1791 in terms of reliability, accuracy, range and affordability. But the gap from the 22-shot Girandoni (powerful enough to take an elk) to a modern firearm is pretty small compared with the changes in technology of “the press.” Compared to the one-sheet-at-a-time printing presses of 1791, the steam and rotary presses invented in the 19th century made printing vastly faster — a speed improvement that dwarfs the speed improvement in firearms in the last 500 years. When the First Amendment was written, a skilled printer could produce 250 sheets in two hours. Today, a modern newspaper printing press can produce 70,000 copies of a newspaper (consisting of dozens of sheets) in an hour. Now, with digital publishing, a newspaper article can be read globally within minutes after it is written.

This means that irresponsible media can cause far more harm today than they could in 1791. For example, in 2005, Newsweek magazine published a false story claiming that American personnel at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated Korans belonging to prisoners there. Eventually, Newsweek retracted the story. But the phony story had already spread worldwide, setting off riots in six countries, in which over 30 people were killed. Had Newsweek been using 18th-century printing presses, the false story would have mostly been read by several thousand people in the New York City area, where Newsweek is based. It would been months — if ever — before the Newsweek issue with the false story was read by anyone in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

We do not limit any constitutional right to the technology that existed in 1791. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the court observed:

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35-36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.

This is an accurate statement of constitutional law, but it understates how truly frivolous the argument against modern firearms is. The people who ratified the Bill of Rights certainly did not anticipate the invention centuries later of the Internet or of thermal imaging sensors. The American people of 1791 did not have to anticipate the invention of repeating arms, because such arms had been in existence for centuries.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/03/firearms-technology-and-the-original-meaning-of-the-second-amendment/