OPINION — Regardless what historians might otherwise suggest, this Friday, April 19, marks the real 249th birthday of the Second Amendment because it was on that date in 1775—more than a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed—the existing government at the time attempted to seize the arms and ammunition of the Colonial militia, igniting the American Revolution and forever altering the course of history.
Like it or not, taxes and tyranny were major issues, but the attempt to seize the arms and ammunition of the good citizens of Massachusetts really lit the fuse. One would think government might learn something from that.
In Massachusetts, they celebrated “Patriot’s Day” on Monday. It is one of history’s biggest ironies that the place where the shooting started—where liberty was born thanks to an armed citizenry—is now one of the most restrictive states in the nation when it comes to gun ownership and, more importantly, gun rights.
People like anti-gun Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey evidently cannot grasp the notion that it was armed private citizens who set the gears of change in motion. Nor do they seem to understand the Second Amendment was eventually included in the Constitution not to allow hunting but to prevent government from ever again trying to disarm the people.
Today, groups including the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Gun Owners of America, Firearms Policy Coalition, National Shooting Sports Foundation, National Association for Gun Right and others stand in the way of those disarmament efforts.
April 19, 1775, was a mild Wednesday, barely one month into Spring. Word reached the colonials in Lexington and Concord that British Regulars had been marching through the night to disarm the militia. About 80 members of the Lexington militia under the command of Capt. John Parker had been waiting through the night at Buckman Tavern and emerged just before 5 a.m. to assemble on Lexington Common. Legend has it that Parker, who suffered from tuberculosis, told his men, “Stand your ground; don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”
Historians still debate who fired the first shot and even whether it was deliberate or a negligent discharge, but within minutes, eight militiamen lay dead, and a new nation had been born. While the Second Amendment may have been enshrined in 1791, it came out kicking and screaming on that day in April 1775.
The Regulars marched on toward Concord, and by the time they arrived, some three hours later, every man with every gun was either waiting for them, or converging on the area. It was here, at the North Bridge, where the fabled “Shot Heard Round the World” was fired.
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
“Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world…”—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Biden administration is pushing more gun control—which a media drowning in political correctness and woke ideology incessantly mislabels as “gun reform”—and his political party has gone from being once identified as the “party of gun control to being now considered the “party of gun prohibition.” Today, virtually every gun control proposal from Congress down to state legislatures and even county and city councils, is the product of a Democrat.
Perhaps one of the best, and easily read, accounts of the fighting at Lexington and Concord can be found at Wikipedia. It’s the stuff too many history teachers overlook because it reminds the reader what this was all about. The British government at the time was led by Gen. Thomas Gage, appointed “Royal Governor of Massachusetts” in 1774.
According to Battlefields.org, Gage “inflamed tensions between the colonies and the mother country and practiced harsh enforcement of British law.” Evidently, bureaucrats and politicians haven’t really changed much over the past 250 years.
The events of that day have been immortalized, romanticized, analyzed and occasionally criticized, and from it all emerges one indisputable conclusion. Had it not been for the attempt to disarm those “embattled farmers” and their determination to not be disarmed, there might not be a “United States,” and there most assuredly would not be a Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms that “shall not be infringed.”
Looking around the American landscape, one can spot too many people who are committed to turning the constitutionally-enumerated right into a government-regulated privilege, or erasing it altogether. These are the people who describe themselves—and are thus described by the establishment media—as “gun safety advocates,” as if they had a plausible notion of genuine gun safety.
Later this year, their dogma will be on the line. The November election could be “make-or-break” for the Second Amendment; the chance to act as did those “embattled farmers” of generations long ago and fight back. This time, not with bullets but with ballots.
The November elections are barely 6 ½ months away. Don’t sit this one out. Celebrate the birth of the Second Amendment on Friday. Protect it by voting on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
