Lately I am hearing more and more disinformation about the founding of America. Some people seem to have the idea that it was a free for all and that no restrictions or regulations of guns existed. In reality nothing could be farther from the truth.

To supplement a piece I wrote for the TU Guns Blog, below are two short edited excerpts from publications that discuss the levels of gun controls and the make up of the militia during the founding of our country. This includes some data that will surprise quite a few of you. I have pasted links to the documents below the piece.

If we are to move forward we must understand where we have been. Clearly our history is far more interesting and complicated than some would have us believe.

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1) Journal of Libertarian Studies

The militia system was originally transplanted to the American colonies from England. At the outset, it was grounded in the principle of universal obligation. Practices differed widely from colony to colony, but everywhere the militia had two coercive elements. First, it enrolled every able bodied male between certain ages (usually sixteen to sixty), with only a few exemptions. Colonial governments required those enrolled to furnish their own arms (no small expense) and to muster for regularly scheduled training. Failure to do so resulted in fines……..

Even before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the colonies increased the number of required training days, tightened exemption lists, and stiffened fines. In Frederick County, Virginia, during the spring of 1775, for instance, the patriot committee increased the frequency of mandatory training days for every male between sixteen and sixty to one per month.

When the states put active military forces into the field, they eventually fell back upon militia drafts.

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2) Excerpts From “Gun Violence in America, The Struggle for Control” by Alexander DeConde:

As the record shows, part of the traditional depiction is valid. English colonists did bring firearms with them for self defense as well for offense against Indians and rival European settlers. They also brought the practice of restricting gun keeping, usually to selected upper class males. In the first company of 105 English settlers who established Jamestown only the men among them had the privilege of carrying fire arms……

Invariably the colonial lawmakers placed Indians high on the list of the “wrong people” (along with Tories and African Americans). Indeed all the colonial government forbade sale of arms and ammunitions to Native Americans. In keeping with this practice, The Virginia House of Burgesses in 1619 enacted legislation prohibiting any settler on the penalty of being hanged for selling or giving firearms to restricted persons.

Later in response to the warfare with and between the Native Americans, the government urged each male colonist to enroll in a militia company and required each to have a firearm stamped as to ownership to prevent its illegal sale.

In 1644 the United Colonies of New England had urged a ban on the sale of firearms and ammunition to “either to the French or Dutch or to any other that do commonly trade the same with Indians.”The next year the general laws in Massachusetts followed the Connecticut practice by BANNING the sale and maintenance of firearms for Indians.

Beginning in 1692 in the interest of public order the Massachusetts Legislature enacted measured control of firearms through laws that affected much of the populace. The colony prohibited private citizens from carrying guns in public.

Racial prejudice and fear of slave insurrections motivated the legislator to enact several laws directed against blacks as evident in Virginia in 1648 in An Act Depriving Negroes from Bearing Arms. These laws remained in effect throughout the colonial period.

In 1756 the Maryland Assembly created a law prohibiting Catholics from owning firearms and confiscated guns and ammunition they possessed. Massachusetts authorizes seized guns from distrusted inhabitants with the intent of preventing social upheavals. In other colonies the ruling establishment believed there was a connection between access to guns and rebellion. As in England local authorities wanted only those individuals who they regard as part of the “right people” – i.e. white protestant men – to have firearms as private possessions with unhampered use.

These discriminatory restrictions embedded in local law remained in effect when the war ended……As prosecutions for homicides in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the colonies indicate, felons did not have ready access to guns and seldom used them in their offenses.

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http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_4/15_4_2.pdf

http://books.google.com/books?id=YLv7QGlyTZ8C&pg=PA406&lpg=PA406&dq=conscription+and+gun+control+in+revolutionary+america&source=bl&ots=A_gFXvB9xT&sig=5sEann_PKWC2DPyy2DkBCM_0YI4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=9Pn4UvrNMoKU0QGm_oHoCw&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=conscription%20and%20gun%20control%20in%20revolutionary%20america&f=false