Military Weapons

While doing research on that E4A Noise Suppressor some synapses reconnected.

I noticed that for a large part of American history the populace at large actually did out-gun the Army.

Then, as now, the population vastly outnumbered it; but back then the common hunting gun was actually a better rifle in many ways than the full-power bolt action the Army issued.

First there's the lever action.  It's the 19th century assault rifle!  High capacity and rate of fire.  That led, eventually, to the .30-30.

Then there's the scoped bolt guns.  Conceptually similar to the Army rifle of the day, but lightened to the extreme and equipped with clear telescopic sights.  Far better optics than were often issued to snipers, in fact.

Those days are long gone.

Despite what the press says, the police are not outgunned by the citizen, let alone the Army.  The citizen has been slowly denied access to advances in weaponry thanks to 1934, 1968 and 1986.  This will eventually be bad for the Army too since the '86 change put the final regulatory nail in the coffin of casual experimentation.

When it was $200 to try out an idea for a new machine gun, people might risk it just to see if it worked out.  When it's around $10,000 for all the licenses just to start playing around; ah fuck it.

It should be noted that Gatling, Maxim, Lewis and Browning weren't government arsenals but private experimenters.  The well entrenched M16 is the result of such private experimentation.

We damn near owe it to ourselves to repeal these laws to drop barriers to entry on many industries simply because (the defacto) protecting the established companies stifles experimentation and creativity.

If we'd had the regulatory environment of today in 1809 we'd have the Pony Express handling the bulk of our mail.