Dirk Struik wrote in his excellent book, Yankee Science in the Making: "The backbone of the [American] Revolution was ... farmers ... with artisans and mechanics from the towns, the smiths, printers, wheelrights, carpenters, masons, and chandlers and brewers, who ... bled on Long Island, near White Plains and at Valley Forge. With them were independent merchants, such as Hancock and Bowdoin in Boston, and Southern landowners such as Washington and Jefferson."
Typical was silversmith Paul Revere, inventor of a prevailing process ("Revereware") for kitchen utensils.
Ideas, words, actions of American Revolution leaders, such as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Monroe, George Mason, were enforced by muskets, cannon, logistical supplies from Colonial inventors and craftsmen.
With the Revolution won, inventors exploited the 1776 Industrial Revolution, developing the American way some NRA-ers reject, while freeloading on its endowments. For, NRA-ers claim "Second Amendment rights to bear arms" while independent American inventors lose property rights in our courts. NRA-ers ignore 14th Amendment rights of inventors for "due process"!
Some time back, newspapers reported that, of domestic labor-savers, only the garbage-disposal was a corporate invention -- others coming from independent inventors, working in garages and basements.
Robert Kearns, the alternating-windshieldwiper inventor, defended his rights for years against corporate lawyers.
Charges against alleged criminals are dismissed if not adjudicated "promptly". Patent fights can last as long as "The Hundred Years' War", or the inventor's resources are exhausted. (The estate-executor of Thomas Edison said Edison paid more in court defense of his inventions than he received from royalties.)
Do NRA-ers honor Sam Slater, "Father" of our Industrial Revolution? A teen-age English textile-mill apprentice, Sam quickly learned machines and processes and invented more, managing a mill at 20. Memorizing machine designs to elude British custom officials, Sam emigrated to America at age 22 and launched the New England textile industry. (Slater instituted America's first "Sunday School" -- real education for working children and teen-agers.)
Do NRA-ers know names of early American inventors? Scythe: Joseph Jenks. Cold rolled copper: Paul Revere. "Kentucky" rifle: "a Rossiter". Plow moldboard: Thomas Jefferson. Improved mariner's quadrant: Thomas Godfrey. Improved theodolite: Roland Houghton. Pennsylvania fireplace, lightning rod, bifocal glasses: Benjamin Franklin. Spinning and carding machine: James Davenport. Submarine: David Bushnell. Automatic flour mill, high pressure steam engine, steam dredge: Oliver Evans. Steel plate engraving: Jacob Perkins. Cotton gin, interchangeable parts, jig, milling machine: Eli Whitney. Screw propeller, multitubular boiler, ocean steamer, ironclad locomotive: John Stevens. Marine torpedo: Robert Fulton. Screw-cutting machine: Abel Stowell.Breech-loading carbine and flintlock: John Hall. Illuminating gas apparatus: David Melville. Power loom: Francis Lowell. Copy lathe, steam automobile: Thomas Blanchard. Hand printing press: George Clymer. Iron plow: Jethro Wood. Cook stove: John Conant. Bronze printing: George Newbury. Typesetter: William Church.
Please note the gun-inventors (in red), among many American gun-inventors. Is the NRA aware of their existence?
Interesting to note that he best writer on American inventors is Struik -- a Dutch-born mathematician.Ignorance of debts to inventors is no excuse! NRA leaders have better information resources than I.
Do NRA-ers honor Edwin Armstrong? Do they know how he is and his many contributions? After Ken Burns' Civil War documentary, Burns portrayed Armstrong as "father of radio". Armstrong created the feedback-circuit (embodied in automation); World War I trackers of enemy planes; and FM radio. RCA contested Armstrong's FM patents, wanting ultrahigh-frequency channels for TV. Exhausted by eventual victory, Armstrong had a nervous breakdown and committed suicide.
Do NRA-ers honor Jack Kilby? Do they know who he is? He invented our primary device, printed circuit, basis of the microchip, for clocks, cars, computers, pacemakers, etc. More than that, this is a big factor in the amazing economic growth of the 90's. Unknown to Americans, in 1993 Kilby won the first Kyoto Award ("The Japanese Nobel Prize"), worth $425,000, more than Kilby made from his patents. In 1999, Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (although not a physicist, but an engineer). Honored in Japan and in Sweden; ignored in his own country!
Peter Drucker's book, The Age of Discontinuity credited new economic growth neither to labor (as Marxists claim) nor to capital investment but to inventors and scientists. (Perhaps 20% of today's jobs derive from modern scientific advances.) But economists and ecnomic text-book writers do not acknowledge this.
The inventor or scientist is "layer of the golden egg". Why do some NRA-ers appear as his free-loading enemies?
In the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Abraham Lincoln described "the struggle between ... two principles. ... The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. ... It is the same spirit that says, 'You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' ... whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to ... live by the fruit of [the people's] labor, or from one race of men ... enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle." Paraphrasing, "You invent or create, and I'll profit without giving royalties or credits."
If a Colonial Musket Association had existed and treated contemporary inventors as some NRA-ers treat ours, the American Revolution would have been lost!
That grating ingrate of an NRA-er Sneers, "Inventors need a credit payer? Well, we've got our guns So we'll stick to our funds, Though it kill 'the gold egg layer'. Who cares for his rights? Come watch my staged fights! I'm Hawkguy, the mobled beerslayer!"