History has an interesting effect on rhetoric. The US Civil War was one of the bloodiest in the battles between brothers. Would gun ownership have saved the First Nation tribes against "manifest destiny", the Hawaiian monarchy against the US Marines or the Japanese Americans against their imprisonment?

Have to wonder.

As a rule, any opponent falls to his enemy because of superior weaponry and organization. But that is not the idea I'm asserting. It is that the civil war might well have been avoided, the indiginous tribes may have endured and the Japanese Americans may never have been abused, had their opponents understood that the cost of their abuse would be too high.

Muskets, rifles, cannon and abundant ammunition in the hands of American Indians (North and South) would have resulted in a much abbreviated visit by English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and French colonists.

Even more important would have been a Sequoyah in about 1400.

B