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This book is very interesting. In 1751 or so, some colonists had issues with some Native Americans, and they were not armed. Instead, they would petition the government for arms and ammunitions. This was a common practice pre civil war. This is how the hierarchy of arming Americans went before the Civil War. The people would petition to their governor who would then look to Europe to arm its people. The colonists of the USA weren't really armed, and if they did have arms they weren't really kept in good or usable condition. This contradicts a lot of what we would think about guns in our nation. Furthermore, Militias would also go through the same process. In fact the highest we ever got when producing firearms during the civil war was around 35,000 ish guns in one year we produced and distributed here locally in our country. That same year Great Britain exported over 89,000 guns.
The book says it lays no claims to pro or anti gun or has no political agenda, it just tries to find truth in what we believe as a common truth.
As for bows and arrows wanting to be used the book makes a great argument. I have never really fired a black powder pistol, musket or rifle, so maybe someone who has more experience with it can jump in and affirm or let us know the truth behind some of this. However, it says that a man could fire 4 to 5 arrows in the time it would take to load and fire one round from a musket. A soldier is also not hindered by the muzzle flash or smoke obscuring his view after his first shot with a musket. A volley of arrows is something that would cause more fear to a man than a volley of musket fire. Now, muskets and other black powder guns were also very inaccurate, unreliable, and even dangerous to fire. Their recoil also makes it so hard to aim that anything they hit would be pretty much out of blind luck. Which is most likely why they marched in ranks and fired volleys of shots instead of individual shots. The most accurate of black powder guns were black powder rifles, which had longer rifled barrels, but also had several special tools and took a lot longer to load and shoot. Even then they were prone to jams and misfires and had to be maintained to keep them in working condition.
The government knew that it would be important to arm its militia and its soldiers but the gun ownage was scarce and on top of that mostly it was ownership of the government. They would distribute arms, the people didn't have them. This was common practice until the Civil War in America and when guns became widely and efficiently manufactured.
I have only scratched the surface of the book, and the author cites all his sources and has a HUGE appendix in the back listing where he got all his information from. A big problem with the information in this book is that there really aren't a lot of well known or widely studied or published that went into the history of manufacturing and arming of the American Citizens. This is a problem that the author mentions early on in his book and he goes through many letters, writings, and thoughts of military and political figures in our history.
So, perhaps the 2nd amendment was meant to take the responsibility off the government of providing people with arms, even though it seems that gun ownership did not boom in this nation until after the Civil War, that is also the first time in our history we were able to mass produce guns efficiently.
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