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Border issues in the old days
Before the National Firearms Act, the makers of the Thompson promoted it as a way to protect ranches against border raiders. 
This was practical: cross border raiding remains common to this day. If you want to get anything south of the border, all it costs is $10 mordida ("bite") to the crossing guards and you vehicle will not be searched. The trunk might be full of AKs or dead hookers or bomb-grade plutonium, it doesn't matter. For $10 no one will make messy inquiries.
· non-US
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"Oh George, not the livestock."
They weren't "raiders". They were hungry, undocumented workers who had organized as a collective to seek relief from their stingy, wealthy neighbors to the north. And that rancher shot their horses just for spite.
No? The question I want answered is "at what point does the militia have a right to act unilaterally to repel an invasion?" Does the 'enemy' really need to be wearing uniforms and driving tanks? Why to the People need 'permission' to defend their country?
(Might make a good seminar topic at the next open UN forum on small arms regulation. But I digress...)
Is it still 10 dollars?
I have to wonder if they were not coming up here,(even back in the old days of the Chicago typewriter) crossing ranchers land to protest our government. They seemingly don't protest their own government that put them in the situation they are in. They crash into this country, destroying ranch land by ripping out fences and littering the ranch. Then protest our government as being unjust. The MSM refuses to point out its their own government that is the source of their problems.
When I moved to TX, I read a scholarly history of the state called Lone Star, by a history prof named Fehrenbach. Indeed, lonely ranches in TX along the Mexican border did suffer raids, Mexican and Indian, into the 1900's. These and other historical events helped explain some oddities in TX law that still exist.
And a smooth running Thompson would have been quite an asset, then or now.
Wow, I guess automatic firearms were in common use before being pretty much banned by the federal government with their tax stamp.
I said it back when Bellesiles new book was reported, that this is building up to be an interesting Summer. Seems the Assault Weapon banners are coming out of the woodwork. The question for the moment is: are they doing this to take peoples minds off the Healthcare fight, or have they decided that they are going to loose big in November so they might as well go for broke.