{"id":1564348,"date":"2022-07-21T08:04:29","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T12:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1564348"},"modified":"2022-07-21T09:19:23","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T13:19:23","slug":"how-guns-made-america-great-and-rich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-guns-made-america-great-and-rich\/","title":{"rendered":"How Guns Made America Great \u2026 (and Rich)"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-guns-made-america-great-and-rich%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1564348&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p><em>By Geoffrey Norman for The Planned Man<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I own guns. \u00a0Not as many as some people, but enough to make people who don\u2019t know about guns\u2014but have strong opinions anyway\u2014uncomfortable.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While these people are not always easy to reason with, it might reassure at least a few of them to know that my favorite gun is no more likely to turn up at a mass shooting\u00a0 or even a drive-by than a Nerf gun, water pistol or, for that matter, a frying pan.<\/p>\n<p>Still, it is the gun I especially like to shoot, and when I hold it, I feel like I have American history itself in my hands.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/thepoliticalinsider.com\/the-slippery-slope-of-red-flag-gun-laws\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Slippery Slope Of \u2018Red Flag\u2019 Gun Laws<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is a black powder, flintlock musket.\u00a0 A fifty-caliber Pennsylvania long rifle.\u00a0 Loaded from the muzzle.\u00a0The powder followed by a ball and patch which you force down with a ramrod.\u00a0 Then you prime the pan, cock the hammer, set the trigger and fire. It is an almost choreographed series of moves and even at my steadiest, I am lucky to get off three shots a minute.<\/p>\n<p>Yet it was, arguably, the decisive weapon in the American Revolution.<\/p>\n<p>Quick story. In October of 1777, in what would be the decisive engagement of the conflict, Battle of Saratoga, the Redcoats were early on having the better of the Colonial army, one element of which was \u201cMorgan\u2019s Riflemen.\u201d \u00a0They were under the command of legendary frontiersman Daniel Morgan, and carried Pennsylvania long rifles.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The British musket \u2013 known as the \u201cBrown Bess\u201d \u2013 had an effective range of some 50 yards; Morgan\u2019s men were lethal out to 300 or more.<\/p>\n<div id=\"subscribe\" class=\"email-signup inarticle\">\n<h4>Support Conservative Voices!<\/h4>\n<h5><strong>Sign up to receive the latest<\/strong> political news, insight, and commentary delivered directly to your inbox.<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<p>When General Benedict Arnold, still on our side at the time, saw the battle was going badly for the Colonials, he had Morgan order one of his best shooters to aim for the British commander, conspicuous on his white horse more than 250 yards away. He doubtless believed the range made him invulnerable.<\/p>\n<p>Morgan\u2019s man made the shot.\u00a0 The battle turned.\u00a0 Back in England, people were appalled.\u00a0 Such long-range killing was considered\u00a0<em>unsporting<\/em>.\u00a0 Arnold went on to a career in treason.\u00a0 The American republic was born.<\/p>\n<p>When I\u2019m out with my Pennsylvania long rifle, the connection to its most legendary practitioners, \u00a0the men who marched with Daniel Morgan, is palpable.<\/p>\n<p>You can\u2019t tell the American story and leave out guns.\u00a0 It would be like trying to tell the story of France without wine or cheese or Napoleon.\u00a0 America was built on guns.\u00a0 Without them we would all be singing \u201cGod Save the Queen,\u201d and pretending to like tea.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/thepoliticalinsider.com\/gun-rights-victory-supreme-court-tosses-new-york-law-restricting-concealed-carry\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gun Rights Victory: Supreme Court Tosses New York Law Restricting Concealed Carry<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Guns \u2013\u00a0<em>American<\/em>\u00a0guns \u2013 not only made victory in the Revolution possible, they made the western expansion possible. Whether or not that was a good thing, or done honorably, is open to discussion.\u00a0 Whether or not it could have been accomplished without guns is not.\u00a0 The side that won the Battle of the Little Bighorn, ironically, was the one that was armed with the better \u2013 and American made \u2013 guns, in this case\u00a0 Henry repeating rifles.<\/p>\n<p>It is not for nothing Americans wrote guns into the Constitution.\u00a0 Or that so many American presidents, including John F. Kennedy, were gun aficionados.\u00a0 One great American president \u2013 Teddy Roosevelt \u2013 might be accurately described, in the current Left-of-center vernacular, as a \u201cgun nut.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There is another aspect of the blood-kin relationship between America and guns that isn\u2019t in many ways as celebrated, but should be.\u00a0 Guns were the seed that spawned the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n<p>Long before Henry Ford was making cars on an assembly line, factories along the Connecticut River were using the river\u2019s hydraulic power to mass produce guns. One of the essentials of mass-production is, of course, the use of interchangeable parts.\u00a0 The engine block of, say, one Chevy 350 is the same as another.\u00a0 And the cylinders or crankshaft from one will fit any other.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The principle was widely understood, in theory, before Eli Whitney validated it, conclusively, shortly after the American Revolution.<\/p>\n<p>Trick was making it work.<\/p>\n<p>In 1801, Whitney built ten guns made of identical parts. Then, in a dog and pony show, he disassembled them in front of Congress, mixed the parts up in a pile, and proceeded to put them back together, into ten functioning guns\u2014with no parts left over.<\/p>\n<p>Skeptics say that Whitney had help, that he somehow cheated, which is something of a tradition when it comes to the landing of defense contracts.\u00a0 Also, the parts that the ten guns were built from had all been hand made.\u00a0 Still \u2026<\/p>\n<p>The momentum toward what became mass production was now irresistible.\u00a0 Factories sprang up along the Connecticut River, where the Industrial Revolution began on these shores.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/thepoliticalinsider.com\/maga-rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-tells-pro-gun-control-british-reporter-go-back-to-your-country\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Tells Pro-Gun Control British Reporter \u2018Go Back to Your Country\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Whitney\u2019s name is, of course, more closely associated with cotton than with guns.\u00a0 Not so the name \u201cColt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Many people, if they think about it at all, associate that name with the famous aphorism, \u201cGod created man, but it was Sam Colt who made them equal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Colt came up with the idea for his immortal pistol after he had run away to sea and was aboard a ship and studying the capstan, which gave him the idea for a revolving cylinder for a pistol, making it possible to shoot several times before reloading.\u00a0 The idea wasn\u2019t totally original with Colt, but it is fair to say that he made it work.\u00a0 And thus was born \u201cthe gun that won the West.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Already this is a great American story. And it gets better.<\/p>\n<p>Colt became one of the great pioneers and implementers of mass production techniques.\u00a0 His factories were \u2013 in a phrase that was not yet in currency \u2013 \u201cstate of the art.\u201d\u00a0 It is fair to say that the Colt Armory in Hartford, Connecticut was the first plant to employ what became known as an \u201cassembly line.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Other huge factories with names like Winchester and Springfield soon lined the Connecticut River.<\/p>\n<p>Colt and others were the aristocracy of American gun making.\u00a0 Just as Henry Ford\u2019s factories later built cars for the people who worked in them, they built guns for the masses.<\/p>\n<p>It was mass production that made the American middle class and societal egalitarianism possible.<\/p>\n<p>There is a little museum in the town of Windsor, Vermont, not far from where I live, called the American Precision Museum. It\u2019s a monument to the great societal sea-change that was brought about by the advent of the assembly line and mass production. These are not such romantic notions these days as they once were, when the alternative was a hard life on the farm or in apprenticeship.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/thepoliticalinsider.com\/liberal-filmmaker-michael-moore-authors-28th-amendment-to-repeal-the-second-amendment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Liberal Filmmaker Michael Moore Authors \u201928th Amendment\u2019 To Repeal The Second Amendment<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But it was mass production that made the American middle class and societal egalitarianism possible. It revolutionized things in a way that was not matched by any technological change until, perhaps, the dawn of our new digital age.<\/p>\n<p>I thought about this when I visited the American Precision Museum.\u00a0 There is something almost touching about the tools on display there, they look so innocently primitive. But it was those machines that would make possible the mass production of everything from sewing machines, to typewriters to automobiles.<\/p>\n<p>They changed life for the better in every city, town and village in this country, they spawned the vast middle class. They made America great.<\/p>\n<p>And it all started with guns.<\/p>\n<p><em>Syndicated with permission from Real Clear Wire.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"disclaimer\">The opinions expressed by contributors and\/or content partners are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Political Insider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Geoffrey Norman for The Planned Man I own guns. \u00a0Not as many as some people, but enough to make people who don\u2019t know about guns\u2014but have strong opinions anyway\u2014uncomfortable.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1574850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1564348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1564348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1574850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1564348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1564348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1564348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}