Some interesting highlights--what I took from it:

The use of firearms rights by Black Power groups, particularly how it was once viewed with terror by the Right, and how the segregationists worked so diligently to keep guns away from black hands while guaranteeing whites would always have one handy. Today, the Right is using that same history as a justification for their contemporary goals and political positions.

Another observation is the evolution of the NRA from a hobbyist group representing sportsmen to a trade association working assidiously to prevent inconvenience to the gun industry--by developing new customers in otherwise saturated markets and working to remove all restrictions and controls.

I was particularly grateful for a discussion on what the founding fathers really felt about firearms.

This is to be expected. Social conditions change, as does the technology. Firearms law seems based on an era when bayonet-equipped muzzle-loading muskets were the dominant military weapon, and pistols were a one-shot deal, useful only in home defense, dueling. Well-regulated militias required masses of infantry firing extensively drilled and coordinated volleys to be militarily effective. Accurate rifles existed, but were not really practical military weapons. They were expensive to manufacture, required extremely high training for marksmen, and had a low rate of fire--all contra-indications for 18th century battlefields. Their initial use as sniper weapons was also resisted by military custom and etiquette. The Civil War demonstrated how tactics refused to evolve to meet the new technology when percussion caps and Minie ball replaced the flintlock musket.

Cartridge ammunition, repeating firearms, smokeless powder, and eventually autoloading weapons, changed the battlefield yet again. These technological advances, plus lower costs due to mass production techniques, inevitably migrated from the battlefield to civilian firearms. If nothing else, the use of firearms in spontaneous moments of rage and the ease for accidents to occur could not have been anticipated.

Of course, no one (except John Brunner in "Stand on Zanzibar", 1968) foresaw the "muckers". Brunner predicted lots of things, the organic foods industry, and the inevitable fraud in it, computer viruses, hackers, the gun industry lobbying for federal firearms subsidies to the poor (on civil rights grounds), endless resource wars, and mass shootings by citizens run amuck.

It's available on pdf download if anyone is interested.