Many Americans owned hunting rifles or pistols instead of proper military guns, and even though the penalty fines were high (over $9,000 in 2014 dollars), they were levied inconsistently and the public largely ignored the law. 15, 2011Ī 1792 federal law required that every man eligible for militia service own a gun and ammunition suitable for military service, report for frequent inspection of their guns, and register his gun ownership on public records. Source: Saul Cornell, “What the ‘Right to Bear Arms’ Really Means,” Jan. Īn 1879 sign in Dodge City, KS prohibiting the carrying of guns. Laws included banning the sale of guns to Native Americans (though colonists frequently traded guns with Native Americans for goods such as corn and fur) banning indentured servants (mainly the Irish) and slaves from owning guns and exempting a variety of professions from owning guns (including doctors, school masters, lawyers, and millers). Īlthough guns were common in colonial and revolutionary America, so were gun restrictions. Some historians suggest that the idea of an individual versus a collective right would not have occurred to the Founding Fathers because the two were intertwined and inseparable: there was an individual right in order to fulfill the collective right of serving in the militia. The notes from the Constitutional Convention do not mention an individual right to a gun for self-defense. The Second Amendment of the US Constitution was ratified on Dec. Some laws, including in Connecticut (1643) and at least five other colonies, required “at least one adult man in every house to carry a gun to church or other public meetings” in order to protect against attacks by Native Americans prevent theft of firearms from unattended homes and, as a 1743 South Carolina law stated, safeguard against “insurrections and other wicked attempts of Negroes and other Slaves.” Other laws required immigrants to own guns in order to immigrate or own land.
Several colonies’ gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the American Revolutionary War.
Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to Catholics, slaves, indentured servants, and Native Americans regulating the storage of gun powder in homes banning loaded guns in Boston houses and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned. Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Guns in Colonial and Revolutionary America
Opponents say that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns that guns are needed for self-defense from threats ranging from local criminals to foreign invaders and that gun ownership deters crime rather than causes more crime. Proponents of more gun control laws state that the Second Amendment was intended for militias that gun violence would be reduced that gun restrictions have always existed and that a majority of Americans, including gun owners, support new gun restrictions.
America’s pervasive gun culture stems in part from its colonial history, revolutionary roots, frontier expansion, and the Second Amendment, which states: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” 22% of Americans own one or more guns (35% of men and 12% of women). The United States has 120.5 guns per 100 people, or about 393,347,000 guns, which is the highest total and per capita number in the world. Infographic illustrating the attributes of the average American gun owner.