A Diabolic Gun Control Strategy

April 19 marks the 248th anniversary of the day on which 700 agents of the lawfully constituted government of Massachusetts approached the town of Lexington intent on seizing the guns of the area’s farmers. Eight farmers were gunned down on Lexington Green, after which the uniformed gun confiscators “came under attack by thousands of swarming” farmers organized as “the Minutemen,” a citizen militia armed with the same weapons as the government’s forces. On the day of “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” in Massachusetts, these United States were founded.

The battle of Lexington and Concord which marked the start of the civil war known as the American Revolution, is too often presented in books and lectures as between “foreign troops” and “Americans.” In order to disguise what was a police action by the royal governor acting on the order of the Commander in Chief (King George), the event is presented in terms of “foreign troops” invading New England, the equivalent in our day of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army landing in Seattle and disarming the local citizens.

By framing Lexington and Concord as Americans vs. aliens, the role of the loyalist American government is overlooked, as is the fact that this was a police action by troops charged with enforcing the law of the land, who spoke the same language and were in some cases cousins of the English-Americans they killed.

Beginning the previous autumn, the local governors of New England began to enforce the king’s October 19 order for the seizure of the people’s guns and ammunition (Cf. Boston Gazette, December 12, 1774). One patriot remarked, “the Decree” that “prohibited having arms and ammunition” was a violation of “the law of self-preservation” and the right to “defend the liberties which God and nature have given us.” (New Hampshire Gazette, January 13, 1775).

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