What transpired after the day of the shot heard ‘round the world said a lot about why the Founders put the right to keep and bear arms in the U.S. Bill of Rights.
After the battles at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the English General Thomas Gage moved to confiscate of the arms of the residents of Boston.
Fearing that the townsmen might rise up and support their countrymen, General Gage connived to disarm them. According to the contemporary historian Richard Frothingham, “[T]he people delivered to the selectmen 1778 fire-arms [muskets], 634 pistols, 973 bayonets, and 38 blunderbusses.” That was a substantial number given that Boston had 16,000 inhabitants, that patriots had already sneaked most of the arms outside of the city and that many arms were likely secreted.
There survives “A List of the Persons Names who lodge their Arms with the Selectmen pursuant to a Vote by them passed yesterday & also of the Number by each delivered.” (In The Founders’ Second Amendment (2008), I wrote that no such list was known to exist, but I finally found it.) It shows a total of 321 names with the types and quantities of arms each surrendered. The majority turned in just one musket (recorded as a “gun”), many of which included a bayonet.
The most prominent name on the list was Paul Revere, but he was the son of the famous patriot, who left Boston with the family. Paul Jr., who stayed in Boston to take care of the family’s properties, turned in three guns, a bayonet and a pair of pistols.
In response to an enquiry from Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull, Gage replied, “You ask why is the town of Boston now shut up? I can only refer you, for an answer, to those bodies of armed men, who now surround the town, and prevent all access to it … . I am surrounded by an armed country … .”
Lexington and Concord, then Boston, were just the first steps to disarm and put the Americans under foot. As attorney and author Stephen P. Halbrook explains, this attempt to disarm Americans is reflective of the unconstitutional intentions some in America have today.
