Resolved. The founders did not enjoy high capacity magazines! (Nor did they enjoy high capacity books, emails or carbon copies…)

As a number of gun control advocates agree with the philosophy behind Jon Stewart’s remark that “when that constitution was written, people had muskets,” I thought it would be fun to apply the same thinking to the rest of our rights.

When the Constitution was written, people had manually inked printing presses with type that had to be set by hand, and were only capable of printing one sheet at a time.

As anyone can see, high capacity magazines like those people read today were impossible.

The people in those days not only had no Internet, they had no televisions, radios, or even microphones. Free speech was limited to what you could say audibly at a public meeting place, a tavern, or maybe a park on a soapboax. They didn’t have typewriters, so unless you had access to a printing press, written speech was limited to what you could write down with a pen. Usually one page at a time, although Thomas Jefferson invented a machine which gripped two pens at a time, allowing him to write an additional copy at the same time he was writing an original. Even carbon paper was not invented until 1806, so according to the Stewart line of thinking, free speech under the First Amendment would not have countenanced such technology.

Comparing communications technology to what was available to the founders and then arguing for limitations based on that sounds ridiculous, of course. Jon Stewart and his ilk would laugh at the idea.

So what makes them think the same thinking is reasonable in the context of guns?