One of the people with whom he corresponded was the Florentine Giovanni Fabbroni, one of the most eminent scientists of his day. As with most such intellects, Fabbroni was a polymath, doing important work in chemestry, electricity, economics, and agriculture science. He was later important in the dissemination of the metric system which while it is admittedly the tool of Dirty Commies everywhere, is a much superior system for scientific research.
Fabbroni is of a sufficient stature to have a crater on the Moon named after him.
Jefferson corresponded with Fabbroni, and a particularly interesting portion of a letter dated June 8, 1778 is today's quote of the day:
I enclose you a list of the killed, wounded, and captives of the enemy from the commencement of hostilities at Lexington in April, 1775, until November, 1777, since which there has been no event of any consequence ... I think that upon the whole it has been about one half the number lost by them, in some instances more, but in others less. This difference is ascribed to our superiority in taking aim when we fire; every soldier in our army having been intimate with his gun from his infancy.This appears to be true of the entire conflict itself (through 1783), with around 27,000 American and French dead to not quite 50,000 British and Hessian dead.
This makes me wonder on how many rounds a year I spend in training (not enough, admittedly, but maybe a thousand) vs. how many the Police spend on training a year (don't know, but wouldn't be surprised if I beat a number of Police Department averages).
Non-scientific and completely anecdotal observation based on working with and knowing many police officers for the past 20 yrs... but if you're shooting 1000 rounds a year you're shooting easily three times what most LEOs I know shoot in a year.
ReplyDeleteThat excludes swat and other tactical response units, obviously.
I took our town's "Citizen Police Academy." I asked what ammo the regular (non-SWAT) officers get for training. The answer was "minimal." I took that to mean enough ammo for a practice round, then a qualifier each 6 months.
ReplyDeleteTotal ammo budget for 64 officer, including a SWAT team for one year was $23K in FY 2012. They were asking the same for '13.
Long story short, but years back my club created an LEO class for IPSC (wear and shoot the uniform duty rig) to encourage LE participation and offer a training option. Greatest participation came from one local agency.
ReplyDeleteIt died quickly. First, none of them could shoot and even though they were competing only against themselves they were embarrassed by the dramatic difference in scores. Second, in a single 7-8 stage match requiring about 220 rounds, Fred, Barney and Cletus were exceeding by over 2X the average annual agency practice allotment the LEOs got. The LEOs whined that their training dept refused to provide ammunition for them to shoot IPSC with.
(Interestingly, I know FBI does provide ammo, or at least used to, because I used to shoot with a number of them At F'burg and Quantico).