Why not? Citizens used to could buy them!
Then the Washington Post went livid!
One of my favorite lines from Good Morning,Vietnam..."what's the difference between the Army and the Cub Scouts? The Cub Scouts don't have heavy artillery."
Read the constitution sometime, Letters of Marquis were for private war ships. The most powerful weapons we had at first. The reason we have to reauthorize the army every 2 years is because we were not supposed to have a regular standing army. It was supposed to be a call up of the militias with arms already present.
Owning artillery was legal once upon a time, and citizenry did indeed own cannon once.
Why not?
Cannons used to be privately owned and no one thought a thing of it.
Yes, I’ll have that Bull designed Iraqi 155mm Al-Majnoonan gun over there in the corner, 500 M795s, 510 of the ATK PGK fuzes and 2 programing stations.
:-)
The confiscation of privately owned artillery was the goal of the Redcoats raid on Concord that set off our freedom fighters.
This guy will give Maura Healey the vapors!
Light recoilless rifles and mortars, however, maybe so.
They're a helpful reminder to cops in surplus armored vehicles that they have no lawful authority to perform house-to-house searches for firearms, or cash, or jewelry, or anything else without a legal warrant, just because they can.
And it's also worth remembering that Henry Knox, the Revolutionary War hero and father of the American Artillery Corps, was a civilian artillery hobbyist. Fun hobby!
Me, I'm a Tanker. Not an ex-tanker, not a former tanker, I'll be a treadhead until the day I die. We work in four-man teams called crews, and I know three other tankers similarly inclined. And yep, we're http://www.armyjeeps.net/armor1.htmin the market for a new ride. With a cannon on it.
Why not? Citizens used to could buy them!
Then the Washington Post went livid!
Is it a matter of trust?
Is it a matter of size?
Is having military arms for the citizenry confined to small calibers?
Does infringement have a threshold?
Up until the 1968 GCA, a citizen could own field artillery without any government oversight. After that, every artillery piece and every projectile has to be registered with the government as a destructive device, but they are still in private hands.