Comment Re:why? (Score 2) 424
200 years ago, people could buy cannons, though. And they did. Privately owned cannons were the majority of the artillery fielded by the fledgling navy and continental navy, so I really fail to see why howitzers should be a problem today.
The main thing keeping people from buying howitzers is the same thing keeping people from buying cannons 200 years ago: A giant milled tube of steel isn't exactly inexpensive to manufacture, and then you have to find a place to keep it.
Antonin Scalia (current Supreme Court Justice) came to visit Harvard Law a couple years back. After the end of his talk he accepted questions, which ranged from the intelligent to the inane. My favorite part: One kid, who may or may not have been affiliated with Harvard (looked like an MIT student to me), claimed that he had visited a military contractor and attempted to buy a missile launcher. But (for some strange reason) the contractor declined to make the sale. The kid asked Scalia what had happened to the right to bear arms. Scalia proceeded to tear into the kid, opening with the line: "First of all, you can't bear a cannon..."
