On April 14, 1775, when British General Thomas Gage, military governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from Secretary of State William Legge, the Earl of Dartmouth and dispatched Lt. Col Francis Smith and 700 British regulars to the Lexington-Concord area, the mission was simple: disarm the rebels, and imprison their leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock in particular.
Though out-numbered, the colonists’ superior intelligence and tactical decisions resulted in forcing the British to withdraw all the way to Charlestown, suffering heavy losses along the way.
This was the famous “shot heard around the world,” and the beginning of the American Revolution, as the subsequent war is commonly known.
We don’t know who fired that shot.
But we do know one thing for sure: the issue was “gun control,” and the colonist’s considered it important enough to fight over.
They weren’t fighting for a right to hunt, or to partake in shooting sports, or even for the right to carry a gun to protect themselves or their homes from criminals.
They knew what everyone ought to know by now: a person has that amount of freedom he or she can protect and defend, and not one bit more.
If the colonists had “obeyed the law” and given up their guns, we wouldn’t have a 2nd amendment -- because we wouldn’t have a United States at all.
Millions and millions of innocent people, in a variety of times and places, have been murdered by governments who had previously managed to disarm those people.
You might just want to remember that.
sj
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