By Harry Schenawolf, author of the Shades of Liberty Series about African American soldiers in the American Revolution. Remember that scene in The Patriot where Mel Gibson scooped up a bunch of guns from under his bed and ran off to destroy a column of redcoats single handed, except he also armed his young children who just happened to be incredible marksmen. Just one of the many dumb historical portrayals in that blockbuster.
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States – an excellent text that breaks down many American myths, missed the mark big time when he wrote “The American victory over the British Army was made possible by the existence of an already armed people. Just about every white male had a gun, and could shoot.” That bit about every male owning a gun and could shoot; research proves it highly questionable. Respected historian David Hackett Fischer fell for the accepted myth when he wrote in his well-written text Washington’s Crossing; “Half a million free Americans were of military age… The great majority owned their own weapons…” These are only a few of the countless examples whose citations could fill this entire article. Just ask any American in the street – Did colonials own guns at the start of the American Revolutionary War? After they stared at you to see if you were bonkers, their resounding answer would be yes, of course. Then they’d figure you were just one of the many who fell asleep during high school history classes.
The truth, if you can bare to give me a chance to explain, is that we have been conned and hoodwinked, something that in this current political discourse we have unfortunately gotten used to. But getting back to guns; firearms were not part of early American culture and no, most colonial Americans not only did not own guns prior to the war, most had never even fired one. Our forefathers and leaders of revolt knew this. They spent the few years leading up to hostilities struggling to smuggle guns from Europe. So, when the time came, they were able to provide their militias with something other than pikes and axes and a few well laid oaths against the bloody redcoats.
First, how did this trip down fantasy lane happen? It appears the first to weave a web of misinformation concerning gun ownership were the hunting clubs of the mid to late 19th century; where it became fashionable to own an English gun, buy all the hunting gear you could, including designer clothes, and head off to a mancave in the woods where real men could bond – which was a lavish cabin supplied with good food and drink – a touch of posh royalty that appealed to every middle class American male – now morphed into what we know as deer camps – just replace the bottles of champaign with six-packs of Budwiser. After all – hunting is how our founders put food on the table. Right? Well, not really, but more on that later.
About the same time, this new hunting mania was supported by Smith & Wesson gun manufacturers who were intent to increase sales of American firearms – excited to reap in massive profits of gun sales with posters of tricorn American minutemen clutching their rifles along with wild west, pistol packing cowboys. Later on, Hollywood threw in it’s own cowboy hat with its high-profile gun genre tied to manhood fantasies; where real men packed iron. Presently, it is the popular and powerful gun activist and lobbyist organization, the National Rifle Association or NRA, who have embraced the myth of a well-established American gun culture built on propagating our gun heritage. So, what are some of the facts that throws water on the assuption that guns have always been a huge part of America’s culture.
Colonials were farmers and had no need to nor did they hunt. Only a very small percentage of the population actually acquired their food through wild game. This is as incredible as it sounds, and unbelievable after generations of text and later media portrayals of colonial Americans as wilderness warriors. But the truth is, our forefathers obtained their meat the same way their relatives did in Europe, from domestic livestock. They were farmers. They spent long hours on their farms, tilling the soil and raising crops and all the animals necessary to feed their families. The chores were numerous and lasted all day and all year long. They had no time to wonder through wooded lands, carrying an expensive musket that cost an entire year’s earnings which was also notoriously inaccurate, hoping to find large game that was far more scarce than today. Oh, and forget about grove bored rifles. They were even more expensive and rare, made by a small number of gunsmiths in America who still had to import the firing mechanism from Europe. Besides, the forests were heavily wooded. Getting off a good shot that wouldn’t be deflected by all the vegetation was nearly impossible. So why bother even owning a gun when all you had to do is raise some beef cattle, a few cows, some hogs, and chickens and walk out to the barn and slaughter all the meat needed. Even frontier communities and settlers brought their livestock with them. And as for hunting – they too found it time consuming and less productive, trying to bag large game in the tight forests. Most brought in wild meat for their family’s consumption by trapping small game which proved much more efficient to supplement their slaughtered livestock.
What about protection from Native Americans and criminals? The homicide level must had been high resulting in the demand for firearms. If you want to tie in the need for gun ownership to protection, don’t look to our early heritage for support – research shows it’s not there. Michael Bellesiles, professor of history at Emory University, published an extensive research on the history of America’s gun culture: Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. He explained it best when he said that we forget that in the 17th century and 18th century, America was one of the most forested places on earth. The trees were dense. It was almost unthinkable that you could get a clear shot at an opponent. The other thing we tend to forget about colonial combat is the degree to which it was hand-to-hand close order. It was the way the Native Americans fought. They tried to get as close to the enemy as possible. If a settler did get off a shot, it almost always missed with no time to reload. It was often the reason why, during ‘Indian wars’, frontier settlers and their families suffered heavily. Even for those settlers with guns, it just didn’t help when attacked and quickly overwhelmed. But for the most part, the settlers did not fight the Indians very often. They handed that task whenever possible to highly trained individuals, the frontier rangers and military who fought like Native Americans. They did so not with rifles, but mainly axes and knives. And of course, British military had use of the bayonet.
As to the importance of guns for protection from other white settlers; scholars of violence have looked at colonial homicide records and found that there was little interpersonal violence in America prior to the 1840s. There was violence, but it was directed. It was state sanctioned. It was violence against slaves. It was violence against Native Americans. But it was not violence between individuals. These were peaceful communities. To quote professor Bellesiles, “When I was doing my research, I found county court records that did not show a homicide in a fifty-year period. The most violent counties averaged one homicide every four years. What was the weapon of choice? Generally, a bladed weapon, either an ax or a knife. I expected that to change in the 19th century, but prior to 1840, there just weren’t that many murders. Maybe 80 percent of the cases involved bladed weapons. In contrast, today there are 24,000 homicides a year in America, in 70 percent of the cases, the weapon used is a gun. Back then, the gun was unusual. If there’s no gun in the house, because it’s difficult and expensive to acquire, you’re not going to use one.” It’s as simple as that, proven by very low homicide records of present nations worldwide with fewer household guns.
At the start of the American Revolution, from what we’ve been told, all colonials owned guns, right? Wrong – only about 13% of Americans had access to a gun and half of them didn’t work. As they say, the proof is in the pudding. In this case, the probate records, though with some limitiations, prove to be the most complete recordings of property ownership in early America. These records listed absolutely everything that a person owned – scraps of metal, broken glasses, bent spoons, broken plows; everything was recorded. It was important to these colonial families for that was how the inheritance was going to be divided, especially given how little property there was. While studying these probate records, Bellesiles wrote that he realized he was not seeing guns. According to common knowledge, they were supposed to be in every single home. But when he looked at the frontiers of western Pennsylvania and northern New England, he found guns in only 10 percent of the probate records, and half of those guns were not in working order. Since then, he’d read 11,150 probate records that sampled over a hundred-year period. He found guns in only 13 percent of those probate records! Startling but, supported by stark analysis of recorded documents, prior to 1850, the gun was just not there.
Some studies point to milita census of firearms conducted by officers. However, most were recorded just prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution when leaders were active in stockpiling weapons smuggled from Europe and handing them out to their milita. These were ‘state owned’ weapons, not privately owned. New England led the way with a higher percentage of these guns. Some milita units were as high as 50% by 1774 – 1775; far from every male owning a gun.
At the start of the American Revolutiona, when the alarm was sounded that the regulars were on the march, many patriots reached above the mantel and pulled down a rusting, decaying, unusable musket, not a rifle, or he found no gun at all. But what about all those movies and paintings of militiamen armed and defiantly standing before the British on Lexington Green that fateful morning, April 19, 1775? Those brave patriots may have been defiant, but barely a dozen had guns. The rest backing up Captain John Parker stood with pikes, bladed weapons, or were unarmed. They were there not to start a war, but to make a point. As the British advanced, Parker told his militia to disperse. After a mysterious gunshot, which the British answered by a volley then charge with the bayonet, only seven muskets on the rebel side were ever fired. Those minutemen suffered nine dead and eight wounded, but only one British officer was injured, shot in the foot and most likely by one of his own men.
So where did the guns come from to fight the British forces? Basically, the local colonial governments took on the responsibility in arming their farmers and merchants. In the two years before the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, the Sons of Liberty leaders, men like Joseph Warren and Samuel Adams, knew they were in trouble if there was to be an armed conflict. They had spent over a decade convincing a third of the colonials that they were living under a tyrannical government, but now they had not the weapons to back up a clash of arms if it came down to it. They worked through their Committee of Correspondence (brainchild of Adams which replaced the ousted royal legislatures) and later Committee of Safety (which became the military arm of local assemblies) along with individual towns’ militias of New England, to frantically assemble firearms and powder. They began stockpiling gunpowder and purchasing firearms from Europe, mainly Dutch and French weapons and – ironically, even some from England; gathering them in the traditional centers for maintenance of weapons – powder houses (that oddly also stored the King’s arms) and town halls. On the eve of the Revolution, Massachusetts had 21,549 guns stockpiled for a province of 250,000 people. Only the New England colonies were doing this; the rest were hopeful that peace could be maintained. When war did come – some of the colonies raided the King’s cache of weapons, accounting for some of the early regiments who were equipped with military muskets along with bayonets.
When the British marched on Concord, Massachusetts to seize a large storage of arms, they faced a different situation. They were too late. The militia had already been well armed from that stockpile of what were called state guns. After the initial confrontation at North Bridge, the conflict turned into a daylong running battle. The British were attacked with a variety of weapons. Many colonials showed up without muskets hoping to be given a firearm. Some had only axes and pikes.
If few Americans owned guns, how did they become such great marksmen. Another easy answer – they weren’t. This is where the common phrase no doubt originated: couldn’t hit the side of a barn. Most colonials, as research has shown, only about 13 percent, had access to a gun and many of them couldn’t get the relics stored in the corner to work. The rest of the population didn’t own a gun with a huge percentage of that number never having even fired a musket prior to the war.
So even without studying combatants who fired their weapons with the number of casualties, one cannot imagine all these fumbling colonialists becoming instant marksmen, especially when firing a musket that in itself was notoriously inaccurate.
Let’s take a look at the Battle of Lexington and Concord – the first time that a large force of British came up against colonial militiamen. The myth has the militia firing from behind trees and walls with great effect. One clue as to any veracity to this is that at one point, a group ambushed the retreating Major Pitcairn, firing from a distance of 10 yards. All missed. The only effect they had was startling the major’s horse who bolted from fright, leaving the commander of marines on the ground.
But lets take a look at the record of participants and rate of fire which is clear. A total of 3763 Americans, fighting all day, hit 273 British. To quote Professor Bellisiles again, those who follow the exact details of Revolutionary battles – and this was studied immediately after the Revolution by the British, by Napoleon, and by the great European armies – know exactly how many rounds of musket fire are necessary to effectively damage the enemy. Understand that rifles were extremely rare and not present among the farmers surrounding Boston. Only later on, at the Battle of Bunker Hill, with the advent of regiments like Colonel Stark’s New Hampshire, (and even later when Daniel Morgan’s company of riflemen showed up for the Siege of Boston) did some militiamen have grove-bored rifles which were far more accurate. It is estimated that one half of one percent, or one in 200 of all balls fired actually hit their target. The classic statement was that in order to kill a man with musket fire, it was necessary to fire seven times his weight in lead. And that’s not too far off.
At the Battle of Lexington and Concord, it took between 50 and 100 pounds of lead per battlefield casualty which included wounding. People would fire and fire and not hit much of anything. Even trained troops tended to fire too early and too high, forcing commanders to hold fire for as long as they could; why we get the classic misquote, don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes. At the Battle of Bunker Hill – Colonel Prescott actually told his men to fire low, Colonel Stark told them to aim for their enemy’s gators that wrapped around the the ankles, and General Putnam… well, he was too busy safely tucked behind Bunker Hill to utter any historical quotes, riding around with entrenching tools dangling from his horse.
As to the phrase “can’t hit the broadside of a barn”; military records have a unique sense of humor. Whenever a shooting match was organized, which was rather rare, they would record exactly the size of the target, how far away the shooters were, and the percentage of shots that hit the target. Generally, the distance was between 20 and 50 feet. Even at the 20-foot range, it was lucky if a third of the shots hit any part of the target, which was six feet high and four feet wide, the standard target. So indeed, the side of a barn is pretty accurate.
But if guns were not regulated, how do we know for sure, outside probate records, that there were few colonial household guns? The answer is plain – guns were regulated and closely recorded by local governments well before and after the American Revolution. The Second Amendment clearly states a well-regulated militia. Not to point fingers, but the truth is often harsh when confronting propaganda. The notion of any colonial, and citizens long after the founding of our nation, being allowed to own a gun, as many as they wanted, and no one, especially the government, ever checked, as embodied in our history, is just a bold-faced lie, intentionally or unintentionally propagated by dismal research or gun activist organizations.
The fact is, colonial governments and later states kept inventories of weapons from the time militias were first organized in America. Research proves colonial assemblies and later states regularly took a census of all firearms. They sent constables and appointed magistrates door-to-door to ask the basic questions; what guns do you have and what condition were they in? Common sense dictated that it was essential to know who had guns, and how usable they were. Land owners of specific wealth were only allowed firearms. This careful census of weapons gained importance in the 1760’s when hostilities towards British rule began to brew among all the colonies. And throughout our early history, there was no opposition. Again, Professor Bellisiles writes, “I wanted just one sentence, someone who thought it was wrong to regulate firearms. But no one in any legislative record ever complained about the gun census.”
This raises the question as to how many guns the governments found in their census? Turning to Bellisiles’ extensive research: “In the Colonial period, there were only enough guns for about one and a half to two percent of the populace. But individual surveys are revealing: At the end of the 17th century, Maryland legislatures tabulated the weaponry they had on hand. They found 20 muskets, 38 carbines, 16 bayonets, 16 swords, 56 fuses, 16 horse pistols and 78 barrels of powder accumulated over the previous 25 years but never used. Not a formidable array of weapons. By 1768, the inventory had grown, listing 200 muskets, 86 carbines and six pistols in usable condition. Another 400 muskets were “very rusty” or “without locks and not worth repairing.” Interestingly, the colonial legislatures collected all these arms and put them in storage for safekeeping.
All the legislatures of the colonies passed laws controlling access to guns, as well as the use of firearms. They reserved the right to seize weapons in times of emergencies and to hand them out to those better able to use them. Colonies forbade the use of firearms in connection with drinking or “entertainments.” The frivolous shooting of a musket during a time of emergency was punishable by death. There were laws about how large the weapons could be, the size of the shot, the quality of powder. All of this was regulated, and continued to be after the Second Amendment was passed; strong evidence of our founders’ use of a well-regulated milita present in the amendment’s wording.
The Second Amendment tied the right to bear arms to the concept of a well-regulated militia. Therefore, the notion that individual citizens would rise to protect the nation bore out when America was attacked. A look at the War of 1812 is proof this did not happen. When the nation’s capital in Washington was attacked by 4,300 British troops in 1814, there were 50,000 militia within a day’s march. What occurred next, as they say, is history. The majority of the militia did not show up. Most of those who did were unarmed. And among those with firearms, they generally fled when fired upon by the British. The few thousand British marched largely unopposed into the capital and burned it.
In summation: Professor Bellesiles’ impecable research is one of others that seriously calls into question the National Rifle Association’s argument that guns are part of our heritage and that the founding fathers wanted a musket in every home. Only thirteen percent of colonial Americans owned a gun. Most Americans were farmers; they had no need for firearms as they did not hunt, but got their meat from domestic animals. Firearms did not prove a deterrant on frontier farms when attacked by Native Americans therefore only about ten percent of settlers had a gun. Colonial homicide was extremely low and when it occured, it did so with a bladed weapon. All firearms were closely regulated and carefully counted before and after the American Revolution. They were collected prior to the war and after the war and most were stockpiled for military use only. When the research is closely examined, it brings into question our Founder’s original intent when crafting the Second Amendment as a right created for all Americans to personally have access to as many arms as they desire without the need for regulation. When one takes historical records into considereation, it lays bare many of the arguments that America has always had a gun culture. It just didn’t.
CHECK OUT THESE GREAT BOOKS ON AMAZON FEATURING BOTH SIDES OF AMERICA’S GUN CULTURE ARGUMENT
Also on Revolutionary War Journal:
Forgotten Warriors of the American Revolution: Major Benjamin Whitcomb of ‘Whitcomb’s Rangers’
Matchlocks & Flintlocks: Weapons That Tamed a New World & Claimed an American Revolution
Rifles and Groove-bored Muskets in the American Revolutionary War
Mass Musketry in the American Revolutionary War
Loading and Firing a Brown Bess Musket in the Eighteenth Century
Volleying Muskets in the American Revolution
Muskets & Rifles of the American Revolution: Difference and Tactics