American Revolution Against British Gun Control

Fred:  Amazing. Colonial Americans started a shooting war because of high taxes.
Mike:  Not quite. They didn't like the taxes. They really didn't like the British army going town to town taking their rifles and gun powder.
Fred:  They could have negotiated.
Mike:  They didn't like the prospect of negotiating after being disarmed.

American Revolution Against British Gun ControlWhy the American revolution started
01/11/13 - DailyPundit by Bill Quick  [edited]

General Thomas Gage was the Royal Governor of Massachusetts. He had restricted town meetings to once a year.

He dispatched the Redcoats to break up an illegal town meeting in Salem. 3000 armed Americans responded, and the British retreated. Everyone in the area aged 16 years or older owned a gun and plenty of gunpowder.

Military rule would be difficult to impose on an armed populace. Gage had only 2,000 troops in Boston. There were thousands of armed men in Boston and more in the surrounding area. One response was to deprive the Americans of gunpowder.

Government evolves. It can be reasonable one year, and tyrannical ten years later. The government is armed and dangerous. A free people must remain armed and dangerous to preserve a reasonable negotiating position.

President George WashingtonGeneral of the revolutionary army and first president of the United States:

•  Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

•  Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance. They are the teeth of the people's liberty.

The Connecticut Gun Ban04/02/13 by Bob Owens
04/02/13 by Bob Owens  [edited]

The second amendment to the US Constitution:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

AMG:  Some people want a powerful government which directs each person's life for his own good and forces community through high taxes and detailed regulation. They usually dismiss the Second Amendment as applying to bands of fighters who haven't been around since the end of the American Revolutionary War. But, there are eloquent people of that time who explained the purpose of the Second Amendment.

Owens:  The men who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of rights were some of the most educated and intelligent men to assemble anywhere at any time. They were all “damned rebels” who had taken up arms against a far-away tyrant. They meant for every American citizen to be armed with weapons of war, to beat back not just frontier raiders or encroaching foreign powers, but to beat back government itself.

Tenche Cox was a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress. He wrote to his fellow citizens in The Pennsylvania Gazette of Feb. 20, 1788  [edited for modern usage]:

The militia of these free commonwealths are entitled and accustomed to their arms. They must be tremendous and irresistible when compared with any possible army. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Should we fear that we shall turn our arms against ourselves?

Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every other terrible implement of the soldier are the birth-right of an American. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments. I trust in God that power will always remain in the hands of the people.

[a year later]

Civil rulers may forget their duty to the people and attempt to tyrannize. We must occasionally raise military forces to defend our country, and they may misuse their power to the injury of their fellow citizens. The Second Amendment confirms the right of the people to keep and bear their private arms to oppose these misuses of power.