[muawiyah]

The medieval definitions about "keeping arms" go along with a number of rights ~ to wit, appear in court, report crimes, hold land titles, etc ~ all of these things are privileges granted to nobility and frequently to towns in their charters.

Without those rights you were NOTHING ~ Jews in France, for example, didn't get the right to "keep arms" until the 18th century.

The right to "bear arms" doesn't just mean carry them around in the definitions of that time ~ it means you could serve in an organized military unit, or in the militia, or on your own behalf. Again, this was, at that time, shorthand for a whole string of privileges that denoted rank in the recognized nobility.

French Jews could not carry arms until about the beginning of the last series of battles that made up what we call the French and Indian War. Men named "Israel" started showing up in the ranks of French soldiers!

If you wanted to know what NOT having the right to keep and bear arms was about you could talk to almost any medieval Jew anywhere on Earth.

Today, Jews all over America have the right to keep and bear arms EXCEPT IN NEW YORK CITY.

They are blind to their own servitude and low class existence.

Today is a great day of Jewish liberation in Illinois.

[marktwain]

Thanks for the history lesson. Many writers have commented on how, in the United States, each man considered himself a member of a society of freeholders. The left denies this, and their “progressivism” is acutally a regressivism returning to the collective rights of feudal society.