Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1859-04-04
THE GAZETTE.
MORNING, APRIL 1. 1859.
REVOLVERS.

1t is said that the improvement IN all the
mechanical contrivances to take away life, is
the best security the world can have for the
continuance of peace. The invention of a
machine that would kill hundred thousand
men at discharge. would 60 far towards IN
,iucins the few thousand war makers, who
play with the lives of millions, to adopt
more peaceful mode Of settling disputed ques-
tons. But the rule does not seem to apply
to less stupendous inventions. Breech-load-
ing guns, which can be loaded and discharged
in a second or two, and which can send
half-ounce ball with murderous precision to
fabulous distance, do not operate as an ar
gument against war. Austria has four or
FIVE hundred thousand men, each one armed
with a good rife, and each one able to Stay an
enemy half mile off-yet Sardinia has
pushed her out-posts to the banks of a mar
row separating river, within short range,
and the opposing sentries glare at each other
across its waters defiant and menacing. If
these well armed soldiers should meet on the
battlefield, there will be more slaug hter-in
proportion to the numbers engaged in the con-
hict-than at any previous period of the
worlds history.
Probably the revolver is as perfect wea-
pom for its size as can be invented. The
single barrel with six revolving chambers Is
capable Of sending six bullets through the
body of man at the usual fighting distance.
Twenty years ago, when frontier fighting
men wore pistol under one side of their
vest and bowie under the other, it was a
common expression "down South that II
the first shot missed the game was, up, as
the butchery that ensued when knives were
produced made one or two deaths pretty
certain. But in our day we cannot tell how
long an enemy is going to pepper w with
bullets. 1.-The has a couple of six shooters we
NAV expect dozen balls in as many seconds
But the excellence of the weapon has not
made broils less frequent in their recurrence
There seems to be peculiar fascination about
the reflection that we can carry half Il dozen
lives in our pocket. This pistol carrying is
a mana--a positive. accursed disease-more
to be dreaded than cholera, plague, leprosy
or yellow fever. All these may sometimes
yield to treatment, but the revolver mania
seems incurable. Those who suffer most from
the prevalence of the calamitous disease are
young persons, who do not usually come un-
der healing influences. They are half out
casts before they get the revolver, and after
wards they are more than halt brutes.
Let any one of ordinary humanity ask
himself what must be the moral condition of
the man who goes about the world with one
of these implements lurking in his BOSOM
We do not object, of course. to a mans
arming himself if he expects to travel throug n
awilderness infested with all manner of wild
and ferocious beasts. But in the streets of a
civilized city, where other laws than those
ofbrute force are in operation, where life and
property are secured by enactments whose
penalties are not dead letter. such barbar-
isms should not be winked at or tolerated.
And yet there are laws enough upon our
statute books to Danish concealed weapons
and to inaugurate the reign of peace and
prosperity, ifthey were rigidly enforced; and
no argument is necessary to show that the
practice of going armed is constant and
portentous threat against human life. A
very few years ago, a man who habitually
wore pistol in his bosom would have been
secuted out of all respectable society. and re-
garded as an outlaw, habitually trampling
upon the sacred rights Of the community; and
yet the arch-enemy of mankind has succeeded
in lowering the moral sense ofour whole land
TO the point of regarding the evil practice with
Indifference or with half-approval.-Bah.