FLINTLOCKS

1. I know, I know, they’re not "stupid," they’re just "completely unpracticed in analytic thought."

2. Words are not things & we do know this, but it is more often words that constitute our thoughts in arguing than do the realities they stand for.

3. The writers of the Constitution were very unfortunate in using the word "(fire)arms" when they obviously meant "flintlocks," but it was an age of Neoclassicism & they were gentlemen & a gentleman didn’t talk that way, because the Romans hadn’t & the Romans hadn’t because they were a slave-owning society & craftsmen were always slaves, & only slaves used the particular, technical word for something crafted. A gentleman used the more abstract word, to show that he never dirtied his hands with manual labor.

4. Imagine we had an umbrella term "wartools," which included tanks, jets, bombers, & aircraft carriers, but also flamethrowers, hand grenades, & assault rifles; & the only way we had for referring to an AR-15 was to call it a "handheld wartool." Would it then be so easy to argue that our Constitution’s "flintlock" right would apply also to a "handheld wartool"?

5. And middle-aged men with small-penis-complexes would have to resort to red sports cars.

6. And disaffected young men could freely express their angst with a smaller resultant body-count.