When I asked about the flintlock rifle over the bar in the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston, the waitress from England did not know anything about the old gun. I commented that it was ironic that she did not know and her eyes turned cold.
“It is just that today is the 250th anniversary of the ‘shot heard ‘round the world’ and here we are in the inn that takes its name from the one the Sons of Liberty met in and you’re English and working in Boston and yet you don’t know anything about this gun,” I rambled.
“What’s the ‘shot heard ‘round the world?’” she asked.
“Oh,” I said.
Back outside on a marvelous April morning, my 12-year-old son, Christian, and I kept following the wending path marked by two red bricks that go end to end from Boston Common to Bunker Hill. This is the Freedom Trail. It’s a clever idea, a path through the old neighborhoods of the city that connects the places we all learned about in middle school history classes. Some are changed, but many, if taken by themselves, still feel like they would not be out of place in 1775.
The Paul Revere House and the Old North Church are particularly well kept. After them, a walkway across the Charles River leads to the USS Constitution (aka, “Old Ironsides”), which is worth the walk all by itself, as is its museum.
We then went up winding streets to Bunker Hill. It was then covered in families with young kids searching for Easter eggs. I could not—this time—find the plaque that explains that the British Red Coats had at first brought the wrong-sized cannon balls in their haste to respond to suddenly entrenched colonial Americans on the hill over the city. This mistake likely prolonged the battle. But, in any case, the British, in their arrogance, had not occupied the hill and so had to march uphill into American muskets to take it.
It is sad to say that, in a sense, the battle is ongoing. Today, those who want to take this freedom from the people are not wearing red coats, and the struggle is in the courts and legislatures, but it is in progress nonetheless.
Massachusetts in 2025 is hardly friendly to the freedom those patriots fought for two and a half centuries ago. Many of today’s local officials, as the British once did, distrust lawfully armed citizens. “A land ruled by fear is not the land of the free,” said Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (D). And she was not referring to crime or criminals, but to armed citizens carrying concealed for their own self-defense.
Outside of Boston that night, my son and I attended a Gun Owners Action League (GOAL) event to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the battles at Concord and Lexington and to celebrate that the British were chased, pans flashing and balls flying, back to Boston by armed patriots.
My son, as he was the youngest person in the room, was called onto the stage. He wore his NRA hat up there and hailed the audience and was gifted a Red Ryder BB gun. The applause was grand and many people fist-pumped him as he clutched the BB gun and walked back to his seat. As I watched this, I wondered why more attendees did not bring their kids or grandkids. They were all so proud to see a 12-year-old there, but none had brought their own. If we are to keep America on the freedom trail, we need to bring the next generation along.
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