18th-Century Americans Were Actually Well-Armed

[Billybob]

18th-Century Americans Were Actually Well-Armed By Don Kates *
Retired law professor and Second Amendment authority Connecticut
Law Tribune May 16, 2011
http://www.ctlawtri bune.com/ getarticle. aspx?ID=40499
<http://www.ctlawtri bune.com/ getarticle. aspx?ID=40499>

In Daniel Kirsch’s May 9 column, “Founding Fathers
Weren’t Gun Toters” (see following article), he claims
the Founders and their contemporaries “did not own guns.”
This falsehood derives from Michael Bellesiles’ **
“Arming America,” which initially received the Bancroft
Prize in American history – given by academics who share
Kirsch’s antipathy to guns and their owners.

Mr. Kirsch is presumably unaware that the book has been
discredited as a fraud, its Bancroft prize has been rescinded, its
publication halted and Bellesiles driven from academia. The facts,
as Professor John M. Dederer notes, are that “by the 18th century,
Americans were the most heavily armed people in the world.” (“War In
America To 1775,” published in 1990).

Indeed, all the Founding Fathers seem to have owned guns, specifically including
George Washington (a gun collector), John Adams, Sam Adams,
Thomas Jefferson (a gun collector and amateur gunsmith), Benjamin
Franklin and Thomas Paine. Last but not least, James Madison,
author of the Second Amendment, boasted of his marksmanship
skills, though admitting that they were no better than average
among his friends. Regarding the Founders’ attitudes toward
gun ownership as a basic right, three quotes are indicative:
• Thomas Jefferson’s personal journal of great quotations
reiterates Cesare Beccaria (“the father of criminlogy”)
dismissing gun control as a “false idea of utility”
because only the law abiding obey – leaving criminals armed.
• Roger Sherman of Connecticut described having guns as
“the privilege of every citizen, [it being] one of his most
essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack on his
liberty and property, by whomsoever made.” • Thomas
Paine also exulted in owning guns and endorsed the right to arms,
declaring “arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and
plunderer in awe and preserve order in the world as well as
property.” All three of these, and hundreds of other such
quotations from late 18th-century Americans, can be found in
Stephen Halbrook’s “The Founders of The Second
Amendment” (2008). Mr. Kirsch is also apparently unaware
that modern criminological studies concur that gun control
disarms only the harmless while leaving criminals armed. After
reviewing hundreds of studies the National Academy of Sciences
(2004) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2003)
could not identify any gun control that had curbed violence,
suicide or gun accidents. (See Charles F. Wellford, “Firearms
and Violence: A Critical Review; National Academy of Sciences;
2004). The Kirsch article has other crucial errors. For
instance, Mr. Kirsch seems to think that because England and
Russia ban handguns so does all of Europe. In fact, law-abiding
Europeans generally encounter less severe bars to buying handguns
than do residents of Connecticut. Any adult Italian without a
criminal record can walk right in and back out of his or her
local gun store with a newly purchased handgun – though he
must register it within 10 days. An Austrian needs a license to
buy a semi-automatic pistol but being licensed for self-defense
is a legal right. (Nor is a license required to buy any kind of
revolver.) In France, licensing is needed to buy any handgun but
home defense licenses are easily available to law abiding adults.
International statistics prove Beccaria right that gun bans
disarm only the law abiding, not criminals. Handgun-allowing
Italy, Austria and France have far lower murder and violent crime
rates than handgun-banning Russia and England. England’s
violent crime rate is twice the U.S. rate. In 2002 England’s
National Crime Intelligence Service evaluated that nation’s
handgun ban in terms that demonstrate Beccaria’s (and the
Founders’) views. Its report stated that, while “Britain
has some of the strictest gun laws in the world it appears that
anyone who wishes to obtain a firearm [illegally] will have
little difficulty in doing so.

” * Don Kates, a California
practitioner, is the author of: the entry on the Second Amendment
in the “Encyclopedia of the American Constitution,” and
articles on it in the Michigan, UCLA and Hastings law journals,
as well as in Constitutional Commentary and Law & Contemporary
Problems.

** Michael A. Bellesiles Tries to Live Down Scholarly
Scandal http://www.nytimes. com/2010/ 08/04/books/ 04bellisles. html
<http://www.nytimes. com/2010/ 08/04/books/ 04bellisles. html>
============ ======= Founding Fathers Weren’t Gun-Toting Types
By DANIEL KRISCH * dkrisch@hortonshiel ds.com
<mailto:dkrisch@hortonshiel ds.com> Attorney Connecticut Law
Tribune May 9, 2011
http://www.ctlawtri bune.com/ getarticle. aspx?id=40441
<http://www.ctlawtri bune.com/ getarticle. aspx?id=40441>

 

[HMFIC]

Thanks for posting. Great article.

 

[Seadog]

Thanks for the post. Great read