Petr: I think you've been had. The story that cutting off the fingers was used to prevent an Englishman from shooting, and that therefore displaying the fingers was an act of defiance, is as far as I know just an old joke. The continuation is that the act of shooting a longbow was referred to as "plucking yew," and that the English therefore customarily display these fingers while shouting "I can still pluck yew. PLUCK YEW!!!"

GUEST: The laws regarding archery practice in medieval England are irrelevant to the question of civilian ownership of military hardware in the US today for precisely the same reason that the second amendment is irrelevant: both were intended to create a civilian militia that the government could call upon to defend or attack in times of war. Both the fourteenth century English and the eighteenth century American governments needed armed men, because they did not have (or did not want to spend) the resources to arm their citizen soldiers themselves. This has changed today. Given the fact of our enormous military budgets funded by taxes, given that we have a large enough standing army and reserves to do battle for a good long time while we train new soldiers, and given that no US army unit would require a soldier to go into battle with his own weapons brought from home, these measures lose their relevance. We simply do not need people in every town to have guns on the wall in order to maintain a "well-organized militia" or mount a defense of the realm. Thus, with the exception of hunting rifles, why do we need guns? And most particularly, why do we need assault weapons? No frustrated cutting-and-pasting of treatises on the longbow will make the overall analogy any stronger.

Also, as a folklorist and oral historian, I'd like to add that it's simply not true to say "All knowledge comes from books letters and discussion not personal memories" In fact, all my knowledge comes from personal memories...though I concede that many of those memories are memories of having read books and participated in discussions. *bg* Seriously, though, even people who cannot read often have incredible and irreplaceable knowledge...

Oh, and please don't tell Raedwulf to Fuck Off, as that is simply rude. It's so much nicer to wish him a good time in his archery pursuits, thus: "Pluck yew, Raedwulf!" (Sorry, I couldn't resist!)