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Patrick Henry: gunny
Posted by David Hardy · 7 April 2005 09:59 PM
One of the comments to a previous post mentioned gun want ads in the Virginia Gazette, and Patrick Henry. A quick google found at least one.
Here it is. Warning: large image, takes a while to download on dialup.
It is dated Jan. 26, 1776, and reads "Such persons as have serviceable guns to sell may find a purchaser by applying to P. Henry, jun."
Don't forget one of Virginia's best jurist , St. George Tucker. His add to sell guns can be found at http://www.pastportal.com/cwdl_new/VA_Gazet/Images/D/1779/0139hi.jpg
When St. George Tucker wrote his Blackstone's Commentaries referencing the Second Amendment it was from first hand experience. St. George Tucker: Member of the Virginia Militia ( fought at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse), Professor of law at the College of William and Mary, and Virginia Judge."This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty .... The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.