Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[kaijyuu]

Actually I think that one's still around and enforced. Bartenders are supposed to stop serving you if you get too drunk.

[Leafsnail]

I'm pretty sure due to the way the legal system works laws automatically stop applying if noone's enforced them for years anyway.  There may be a law down on paper saying you're allowed to shoot that Scotsman with a longbow in a certain northern town but if you actually did it you'd still go down for murder.

[Pnx]

Yeah, the UK legal system can be kind of crazy, it's basically mostly held together with mutual understandings, unspoken agreements, and sometimes a hefty helping of bureaucracy.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There may be a law down on paper saying you're allowed to shoot that Scotsman with a longbow in a certain northern town but if you actually did it you'd still go down for murder.

Where are you even going to find a longbow?

[Pnx]

There may be a law down on paper saying you're allowed to shoot that Scotsman with a longbow in a certain northern town but if you actually did it you'd still go down for murder.

Where are you even going to find a longbow?

Buy one? Not hard, honestly, longbow is still kind of a national sport, there are longbow teams that compete with genuine longbows to stick arrows in a bull.

[Knight of Fools]

Your rumor stems from a few rural towns with archaic laws requiring every male head of household to own at least one operating firearm. How that's phrased should probably be a good indicator of just how archaic they are. It isn't anything you could actually enforce.

That mostly stems from the lack of a strong armed forces back in the US's early days, as an armed militia is better than nothing. It's probably the same reason longbow training was required in England, though the idea may have been slightly more offensive than defensive.

[Neonivek]

Actually I think that one's still around and enforced. Bartenders are supposed to stop serving you if you get too drunk.

Yeah, they will still let you drink yourself under the table but they will stop at outright drunk unless it was a barely legal bar.

as an armed militia is better than nothing

Actually as time went on the value of militia went up. While in the medieval times a team of 10 mounted knights could defeat a force 100 times that of peasants (it was possible), the advent of guns increased their deadlyness.

Add in that military knowledge was extremely flawed back then, a militia wasn't that much worse then your trained soldiers.

Oddly enough the image of war that stuck me the most was a painting of a pregnant woman with a sword hacking away at enemy soldiers.

[Willfor]

Actually as time went on the value of militia went up. While in the medieval times a team of 10 mounted knights could defeat a force 100 times that of peasants (it was possible), the advent of guns increased their deadlyness.

Add in that military knowledge was extremely flawed back then, a militia wasn't that much worse then your trained soldiers.

I would like to point out that this varied greatly from place to place, and from time period to time period. The gun coexisted with armored knights for quite some time until the gun overcame some of its technical flaws. It was the economic model that knights were based on that proved their ultimate downfall.

After that -- and for quite some time -- the only thing that distinguished a militia from a trained military was the number of artillery pieces and cavalry units it could field. With the militia wielding slim to none.

And this didn't happen all at once, all over the world. There were blends and cocktails of certain military styles and capacities.

[Gantolandon]

Actually as time went on the value of militia went up. While in the medieval times a team of 10 mounted knights could defeat a force 100 times that of peasants (it was possible), the advent of guns increased their deadlyness.

Add in that military knowledge was extremely flawed back then, a militia wasn't that much worse then your trained soldiers.

I would like to point out that this varied greatly from place to place, and from time period to time period. The gun coexisted with armored knights for quite some time until the gun overcame some of its technical flaws. It was the economic model that knights were based on that proved their ultimate downfall.

After that -- and for quite some time -- the only thing that distinguished a militia from a trained military was the number of artillery pieces and cavalry units it could field. With the militia wielding slim to none.

And this didn't happen all at once, all over the world. There were blends and cocktails of certain military styles and capacities.

It helped that it was easier to field gunmen than armored knights. The former belonged to nobility, had to be trained quite a lot and needed to buy their own armor and mounts, which was quite expensive. It was much easier to get some peasants, give them some arquebuses and tell them how to reload and shoot. They didn't even have to aim, just point it in the general direction of the enemy (who would rarely spread his forces) and let the probability do the rest.

[scriver]

A professional, trained, and disciplined army has always beaten a militia with the same equipment, no matter what historical period of warfare you are looking at. The only reason anyone ever went with militia-based armies is because it was cheaper (unless you're Switzerland, in which case your army is a professionally trained militia and doesn't count). Just look at the awesomeness the Caroleans of the Swedish "Empire" accomplished despite their disadvantage in numbers. The Battle of Narva, for example.

[/end Swedo-centrism]

[miauw62]

Actually as time went on the value of militia went up. While in the medieval times a team of 10 mounted knights could defeat a force 100 times that of peasants (it was possible)

Are you sure about that?


(also counts for above)

[Cthulhu]

Actually as time went on the value of militia went up. While in the medieval times a team of 10 mounted knights could defeat a force 100 times

You think ten mounted knights could beat a thousand peasants?  If they're in a 10-wide hallway maybe but I think you're underestimating the weight of sheer numbers.

[Darvi]

Especially if the peasants are armed to the teeth with chickens.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Besides, mounted knights were so heavily armored that if they were to become, say, unmounted, it would lead to them being almost unable to stand, walk, or move. There's a reason why only the strongest breeds of horses were warhorses.

[miauw62]

Probably the reason we won the battle of the golden spurs.
Take spears, stab horses, stab knights.