Sunstruck Magazine - Freedom is fundamentally an individual right, to argue that the founders intended to place that right beyond the reach of any regulations requires an almost willful ignorance. During the Revolutionary War, personal weapons were routinely confiscated by colonial governments to be used in the service of the State. And laws that prohibited carrying concealed firearms were ubiquitous throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Texas Governor J.S. Hogg told his legislature in 1893 that “the mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder,” and that “[checking] it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.” In most cities and frontier towns throughout that period, authorities required all firearms and other deadly weapons to be checked upon arrival like one might check a coat at a restaurant. Even the quintessential Wild West town, Tombstone, Arizona, had more stringent firearms regulations than most cities today. As Politico’s Katherine Benton-Cohen wrote following the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2012:
“In late 1880, as regional violence ratcheted up, Tombstone strengthened its existing ban on concealed weapons to outlaw the carrying of any deadly weapons within the town limits. The Earps (who were Republicans) and Doc Holliday maintained that they were acting as law officers—not citizen vigilantes—when they shot their opponents. That is to say, they were sworn officers whose jobs included enforcement of Tombstone’s gun laws.” Such was also the case in colonial Boston, Philadelphia, New York and many other places the founders called home, and it would remain so in an ever expanding list of cities for the next two centuries. But as bankrupt as the idea of an unbounded right to possess firearms may be, even more laughable is the surprisingly common notion that the framers of the Constitution intended for armed citizens to use their weapons as a means of insurrection against the federal government. It’s
According to FBI data, rifles were used in only 322 murders out of 12,765 in 2012. Handguns were used in 6,371 murders.
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