Defense Distributed’s Plastic Liberator

A friend of the blog sent this news story a few days back – from the UK Register:

Plans for fully 3D-printed gun go online next week
The Liberator pistol causes political panic

Defense Distributed, the pending non-profit that plans to make 3D-printed weaponry available for anyone with such a printer, will release the blueprints for a fully-working plastic firearm next week.

The UK Register is pretty open about their bias in the story, which they at least try to make funny, but it’s on the level of McNugget jokes.  But they do point out that Democrats have never seen anything they don’t wish to control.

“Security checkpoints, background checks, and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser,” said Congressman Steve Israel (D-NY) in a statement.

“When I started talking about the issue of plastic firearms months ago,” Israel said, “I was told the idea of a plastic gun is science-fiction. Now that this technology appears to be upon us, we need to act now to extend the ban on plastic firearms.”

HotAir today has a story citing that ol’ Chuck Schumer, who’s never met a ban he didn’t like, and demands total control over you groveling peasants who need to kneel before his Ruling Class dictatorial power – because it’s what’s good for you – also wants to ban it.

Bloomberg’s own pet news agency even criticizes Schumer and thinks they need to forget about plastic guns and ban the rest first.

Should we light our hair on fire about plastic guns made with 3D printers?

Too late for Senator Charles Schumer. The combustible New York Democrat is encouraging hysteria over the prospect of criminals using 3D printers to manufacture firearms, possibly to assassinate the president. “We’re facing a situation where anyone—a felon, a terrorist—can open a gun factory in their garage ,and the weapons they make will be undetectable,” Schumer said. “It’s stomach-churning.”

Bloomberg’s own people don’t care about actual criminals, though:

…If you’ve got the skills, you can already make a gun in your basement, and there are less complicated ways to do it than using a $10,000 3D printer and computer set-up. Why would bad guys bother making comic book firearms when they can go online and order anything from a Glock 9 mm pistol to a Bushmaster military-style semiautomatic rifle with 30-round ammunition magazines?

Perhaps the evil doer wouldn’t want to leave a credit-card trail. Then he pays cash at a Main Street gun shop, a weekend gun show, or to the criminal down the block who sells black market firepower from the trunk of his car. Or the crook steals or borrows his gun.

Point being, ban real guns first.  Get the “dangerous ones”, then ban all the rest.

-

The plastic Liberator pistol is a very interesting thing, and not just in its mechanics.

Perhaps the most interesting is what’s in the name.  A Russian professor of mine that taught Chekhov explained that Chekhov’s names always were indicative of the character; and names are often very, very important.  Going a very long way back in history, true names were a method to power over someone – either due to knowing someone and being able to identify them in a time before pictures, or out of a very early belief in names as a form of magic.  Here, too, in a very fascinating way, the name was chosen for a reason, and is very indicative of what this pistol really represents.

Here with the plastic Liberator, we have all that liberty and liberation connotates, that this will free the information and free the people to have the tools to arm themselves against tyranny.  We also have its historical antecedent, the FP-45 Liberator pistol:

It was made on the cheap, and made to be distributed to resistance fighters.

It had abysmal accuracy, but the purpose of the pistol was very specific.

It was made to shoot occupying forces up close and personal.  It was made to shoot Nazi dictator thugs at extreme close range.

–

Some computer geeks at The Verge yammer on about the convergence between “crypto-anarchists” and guns, but for them, history doesn’t exist before the Palo Alto labs, apparently.

Cyberculture icon Stewart Brand’s famous notion that “information wants to be free” has been an almost ubiquitous refrain ever since utopian-minded hackers began populating computer networks in the 1980s. Today, 3D printing has given the phrase a whole new meaning, allowing raw data to become real world weapons with the click of a button. Cody R. Wilson, the antagonistic founder of Defense Distributed, is taking that idea to its logical — and hugely controversial — extreme.

Except it’s not an extreme at all…

(DefCad’s) his reasoning, he claims, isn’t really about the Second Amendment at all — it’s about technological progress rendering the very concept of gun control meaningless.

“It’s more radical for us,” he told Motherboard in “Click Print Gun,” a recent mini-doc about the dark side of the 3D printing revolution. “There are people all over the world downloading our files and we say ‘good.’ We say you should have access to this. You simply should.”

If this all sounds very similar to the good gospel spread by Brand and advanced by progressives and activists like the late Aaron Swartz, you’re hearing it right. But even without the context of Wilson’s operation, firearms and freedom of information share a strangely similar history, an oft-overlooked ideological confluence between hackers and gun advocates that seems to be gaining momentum.

Except it’s not extreme at all, as guns existed well before computers…

If you go back before 1934, there were no restrictions on guns except if you were black or another wrong color/status.  There were restrictions on people, and that’s what was understood.  Guns aren’t dangerous, criminals are dangerous because they don’t restrict themselves to any laws or social mores.  Guns weren’t dangerous to the people in power, freed black former slaves with guns were dangerous, because guns are tools of power.  Today, as then, it’s not the guns that are dangerous – Schumer and his ilk are surrounded by security with guns and send their kids to schools with guns and will come after you with guns – it’s you being armed that’s dangerous to his power.  Guns are just a tool, as they always have been.

Guns used to be made by smiths, but anyone with access to some basic tools and a bit of skill can make them.  Zip guns have been made out of virtually nothing for decades.  Submachineguns are relatively easy to make, and some famous SMGs were even made in facilities as simple as bicycle shops.

The next leftist dictator-tyrant argument is then to control ammo and powder, which has a few major flaws.  Namely, their enforcers use them, and their enforcers provide criminals with guns and ammo, so the criminal argument goes right out the window.  Of course it isn’t about criminals, it’s about making you into a criminal so they can tell you how to live and make you live the right way.  It’s never about the guns, it’s about the control.  Components to make ammunition aren’t impossible to come by, and conventional ammunition is only needed once – until an armed instrument of the state has his tools liberated.

The entire concept of homemade guns isn’t extreme.  Going back a few decades, not only could you buy a machinegun by mail, no matter who you were, but you could build whatever you liked.  There was a great heyday of gun manufacturing in the early 20th century before regulations started becoming overwhelming.  John Moses Browning was designing his greatest works in the early 20th Century – from pistols to machineguns, many of which are still in use today.  Consider that the M2 heavy machine gun is something that’s been in service for nearly 100 years.  It’s not that there aren’t more designers for weapons with better ideas, it’s that government regulations have limited the marketplace and made it more difficult to experiment.  Government has stalled technological development – developments that used to be made in mechanic shops when designers and engineers and skilled craftsmen got together and designed new tools.

There were virtually no regulations or restrictions on firearms for a hundred years or more, with the exception of those laws meant to target blacks, American Indians, and other specific groups that the majority wanted to oppress; and a few local laws.

Defense Distributed to some degree is just bringing things back to how they were for generations.  Before, the government trusted citizens and so it didn’t restrict citizens, soon, the government simply won’t be able to restrict citizens; and if they do restrict enough, there will be tools of liberation available.

Harry Reid, History and Tyranny

Via Drudge, from Real Clear Politics:

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) mocked Second Amendment rights activists while announcing his support for a ban on assault weapons and limits to high-capacity magazine clips on the Senate floor today.

REID: In the 1920s, organized crime was committing murders with machine guns. So Congress dramatically limited the sale and transfer of machine guns. As a result, machine guns all but disappeared from the streets. We can and should take the same common-sense approach to safeguard Americans from modern weapons of war.

Starting from the end of this statement and working back, modern weapons of war aren’t legal (without a lot of licensing) precisely because of the National Firearms Act of 1934 that Reid is alluding to.  But wait, you say – the National Firearms Act came out in 1934?  Yes, yes it did.

Organized crime became an issue in the 1920s because of a great early Progressive idea to make people better: Prohibition.  Prohibition was so important to those who “know what’s best” that the government went out and poisoned US citizens intentionally:

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Although mostly forgotten today, the “chemist’s war of Prohibition” remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was “our national experiment in extermination.”

Early progressives had decided that intemperance needed to be squashed, even if it meant murdering some 10,000 citizens who drink by having government poison them.

The 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933, and just like that, the revenue stream for bootleggers and organized crime evaporated overnight.  Coupled with the beginning of the Great Depression exacerbated by FDR’s policies impacting the entire economy, organized crime wasn’t making the same kind of money and thus it wasn’t the same threat it was in the 1920s.

Reid continued saying he’d vote for Feinstein’s “Assault” Weapons Ban:

That is why I will vote for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban – because we must strike a better balance between the right to defend ourselves and the right of every child in America to grow up safe from gun violence. I will vote for the ban because maintaining law and order is more important than satisfying conspiracy theorists who believe in black helicopters and false flags. I will vote for the ban because saving the lives of young police officers and innocent civilians is more important than preventing imagined tyranny.

There is no “balance” as you move towards tyranny, even if you mock those who warn of tyranny.  There can be no right to grow up safe.  These are wonderful abstract concepts that are high-minded, but impossible.  You cannot “grow up safe”.  The world cannot be made into a safe place.

“Maintaining law and order” would mean enforcing laws first.  Obama doesn’t even enforce gun laws.  Mocking people who oppose the bill as conspiracy theorists just means you don’t have an argument.

The Obama administration has actively engaged in a conspiracy against the Second Amendment by shipping guns to narcoterrorist cartels in Mexico.  You can read all about it.

Lastly, Reid claiming to want to save the lives of young police officers by destroying the Second Amendment they swear an oath to – as part of the Constitution, just means that he cares about protecting organs of the state but not about the rights of the people – the same rights that cop swears to uphold.

As to “saving the lives of innocent civilians” being more important that “preventing imagined tyranny”, scroll back up and read about the Chemist’s War.  The US government actively poisoned people in order to push its Progressive “good idea” of Prohibition, whether people wanted it or not.  The same time that the Senate was looking at banning machineguns, the same government was poisoning people.  Also in the early 1930s, not only was the government banning the right to own machineguns “for the greater good”, they were also infecting black people with syphilis as guinea pigs in the Tuskegee experiment.  There were also forced sterilizations and such going on in the name of eugenic racial improvement, another Progressive idea, all “for the greater good”.

Reid, just like politicians at that time would’ve, is arguing that people should surrender their rights for their own good because government really wants to help them… It wants to help them so much it murders them for their own good – from poisoning people to support Prohibition to sending guns to narcoterrorist cartels to kill people to support gun control.

There is no “imagined tyranny”, there are just increasing levels of tyranny.  With history as our guide, we know we need to stay well-armed to stay safe, and we know that a government that mocks us ultimately means us harm.  They aren’t by, for, and of the people.

Harry Reid is also indulging in the Broken Window Fallacy.  The complaints he makes today about protecting children and cops are ones that are visible.  The tyranny that others warn against isn’t here yet, and takes time to materialize.  But this isn’t some Manbearpig fantasy, we have all of human history to see the repetition of tyranny as Innocents Betrayed illustrates above.  We know what happens when governments get powerful.  We have seen the US government in the last four years send guns to narcoterrorist cartels and hush it up afterwards.  We have seen the US government poison over 10,000 people just to push Prohibition.

There is no imagined tyranny.  It exists, creeping, always encroaching, and always there.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Race and the Gun Debate – No Guns For Negroes, Robert Williams and The NRA vs The KKK

Juan Williams has this piece at the Wall Street Journal.  I’ll start with Juan’s ultimate opinion and work back:

One thing you don’t hear much about in the discussions of guns: race.

That is an astonishing omission, because race ought to be an inescapable part of the debate…

I support gun control.

He’s a leftist, even if he’s one who’s on FOX news as a contributor, and even if he did get blackballed for saying some things the left didn’t approve of.

He doesn’t understand, however, that gun control is inherently racist.  Juan Williams must not know the racist history of gun control:

Disarming blacks made blacks unequal, despite freedom from slavery.  This contributed to the societal problems that led to crime and led to the opportunity to be oppressed later on.

Williams spends the rest of the article looking at the destruction of the black family, which is the effect of things like the Great Society, which replaced the family unit and the father with government.  He blathers for a bit about how black and hispanic folks favor gun control “because they’re the victims of gun crime” he says, while ignoring that they’ve been chopped into ethnic Democrat voting blocs that typically fall in lock-step – all due to the same effects of programs like the Great Society that foster dependence on government.

“I’ll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” — Lyndon B. Johnson to two governors on Air Force One according Ronald Kessler’s Book, “Inside The White House”

That same subjugation by dependence on government and subjugation by racist gun control led to communities which could not defend themselves.  Individuals had to rely on police for protection, often the same police that would oppress them, or otherwise ignore their communities and thus individual cries for help.  Disarmed, only the criminals could defend themselves, while the law-abiding were left at the mercy of both gangs and racists.  Due to being only a couple generations from slavery, the individual may not have been properous enough to escape a bad community; but again, the only reason the community was as bad as it was was because of government deciding what was best for black folks.

Every cause that Williams looks at for violence in the black community is the direct result of government interference.

Thomas Sowell wrote a few years ago about how Oakland, CA, used to have a thriving black community with thriving black-owned small businesses in the 1950s.  Rather than improve when social programs were implemented in the 1960s, the entire community began to decline.  He also notes that leftist judicial policies contributed heavily to the decline.

In short, it’s not the guns.  The lack of guns made individual blacks defenseless and the black community less safe – criminals in armed communities know that someone may resist, whether those criminals are black gangs or white night rider terrorists.  The interference by government in the form of gun control undermined safety, and the interference by government in social and economic aspects of life destroyed the family that was the building block of that society.

It’s the welfare state and government telling black folks how to live their lives that creates the problems.  Further restricting the rights of black citizens – including gun rights – isn’t going to help.  Restrictions of rights never help anyone of any color.

Just ask Otis McDonald:

—

The other half of the race and the gun debate story today was an email exchange involving racist black Alabama Democrat state representative Joe Mitchell, who demonstrated ignorance of his own history by going off on a constituent:

“Your folk never used all this sheit (sic) to protect my folk from your slave-holding, murdering, adulterous, baby-raping, incestuous, snaggle-toothed, backward-a**ed, inbreed (sic), imported criminal-minded kin folk.”

Except if you just watched No Guns For Negroes above, you know that the Deacons For Defense did “use all this sheit”, and if you know the history of the NRA during the civil rights movement, you also know that his colorfully-worded condemnation is completely bogus and woefully ignorant of the history of gun rights being used for black defense:

In Monroe, North Carolina, in 1958, Mr. Robert Williams reopened a local chapter of the NAACP. He enlisted the help of Dr. Albert Perry, a physician and leader in the Black community. These two men created an active and robust local chapter of the NAACP and worked for equal rights for the Black population.

However, Monroe was KKK country. The Klan included in its membership the sheriff, most police officers, several judges and every elected official in the county. As the Black population grew more organized the Klan became more brutal.

Mr. Williams was a former U.S. Marine who understood that force must be met with force, so in 1960 he turned to the nation’s oldest civil rights organization for help. He applied to the National Rifle Association for a local charter. The NRA issued him the charter and supplied firearms training material.

Officially sanctioned as the Monroe NRA Rifle Club Mr. Williams recruited other Black veterans. The group armed themselves and started training with their guns. This further infuriated the Klan but it also inflamed the white liberals who had previously supported Mr. Williams and Dr. Perry.

The liberals were no more interested in seeing Black men exercising their Second Amendment rights than the Klan was. The White liberals were only interested in the Black population attaining some rights, not in securing the full rights afforded all free men by their creator.

The Klan was quick to recognize that the Blacks no longer enjoyed the support of the White liberals and increased their harassment of the Black community. Armed Klansmen regularly drove through the Black section of town shooting into homes and shooting at anyone unfortunate enough to be out after dark. Frequently, these drive-by shootings were preceded by a police patrol car that scouted targets for the Klan.

Unable to disband either the local NAACP branch or the local NRA branch, the Klan decided to mount a full, armed assault on Dr. Perry’s home. They thought they could bring down the groups by eliminating their most influential leader.

The local NRA branch heard about the planned raid and quickly called a meeting to be held at the doctor’s house on that night. Well armed men showed up at the doctors house and prepared for the assault they knew was coming.

When the Klan arrived, instead of finding the good doctor alone with his family they found the house fortified with sandbags and guarded by armed men who knew how to use their weapons. A firefight ensued.

The Klan and their police support were no match for the local NRA members. The NRA members drove off the attackers inflicting unknown causalities on the raiders.

What we do know is that this was the last time the police joined the Klan in a raid in Monroe. It wasn’t the end of their support of the Klan, but it was the last time the police openly joined in an armed attack on a Black home in Monroe.

And on the off chance you don’t like that story, you can read basically the same one from PBS.

The point is the same, and John Bender at Federal Observer wrote it well over 10 years ago:

As Monroe demonstrates, Blacks should be among the strongest supporters of the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment puts teeth in the rest of the Constitution. It guarantees personal freedom far better than any paternalistic government program. In Monroe, as in much of the country, Blacks couldn’t look to the government for protection. The Klan controlled the government there. Their only defense was self-defense. The men in the local NRA showed that they were up to the task of defending themselves and their families. They didn’t need some elitist demigod to protect their rights.

Under the laws we have today the men of Monroe would be unable to mount such a defense. So called “Saturday Night Special” laws and laws against discount mail order sales of guns, price guns out of the reach of many low wage citizens. Registration and licensing laws would tell the Klan sheriff who had guns and allow him to round them up before any raid today.

If the sheriff in Monroe had access to the BATF’s national firearm files he could have disarmed the local NRA members before the Klan raided the doctor’s home. Instead of the Klan being driven off, things would have ended very differently. This story would be a story about just one more successful Klan raid on a defenseless Black family.

Black Conservatives: Gun Control Has Racist Roots

With video at the Daily Caller.

“For black Americans, we know that gun control has ultimately been about people control. It sprouts from racist soil; be it after the, or during the infamous Dred Scott case where black man’s humanity was not recognized,” said Niger Innis, spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality at the press conference sponsored by the Center for Urban Renewal and Education.

Harry Alford, the president of the Black Chamber of Commerce, praised the National Rifle Association in his speech at the event.

“The National Rifle Association was started, founded by religious leaders who wanted to protect free slaves from the Ku Klux Klan,” said Alford.

“They would raise money, buy arms, show the free slaves how to use those arms and protect their families. God bless you. Many of us probably wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the NRA.”

Those who’ve never read it should take the time to read Clayton Cramer’s “The Racist Roots of Gun Control“.  It’s a relatively short essay that really opens your eyes if you’ve never heard the arguments before.

Thomas Sowell and A Conflict of Visions

From 2008, but very interesting to hear how many of the things that were discussed came to pass.

And just today, a story about nuclear North Korea.  Sowell concerns his discussion then more with Iran, but it’s still worth noting.

Legal Immigrant & “American By Choice” Henson Ong Speaks Out Against Connecticut Gun Control

Henson Ong speaks out about gun control.

A must-watch.  He humbly says he’s not eloquent… which is the only thing he says that isn’t true.

By the number of views, looks like it’s going viral.

“Bring Your Pieces to Church”

A very interesting piece over at The American Vision:

Imagine the following scenario: At church this Sunday, while reviewing the list of announcements and upcoming events for your church, your pastor added, “Oh, and don’t forget: on Sundays we have our regular target practice. Make sure to bring your rifles. Make sure to bring your pieces to church.”

Absurd, right? Not so. It used to be the American way. For example, a 1631 law in Virginia required citizens to own firearms, to engage in practice with them, and to do so publicly on holy days. It demanded that the people “bring their pieces to the church.” Somewhere along the line we have lost this mindset. Today the ideas of church and arms are assumed to be at odds, as if loving your neighbor has nothing to do with the preservation and defense of life and property.

But the idea of Christian society and an armed, skilled populace actually have deep historical roots.

Self-defense was viewed as what it is – a testament to the fact that you cared about life, liberty, property, happiness, and freedom.  In this case, it’s often the freedom to worship, but still, interesting even so.

The American Second Amendment did not spring into existence from nowhere. It had a long pedigree. The Christian society emerging from the old laws of Alfred continued to include the ideal of an armed populace as a means of securing human liberties. The Founders, many of them lawyers, had studied that legal tradition and would have read William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769). The first part of the first volume elaborates on the subject of our “principal absolute rights… of personal security, personal liberty, and private property [i.e. life, liberty, and property].” It then covers five means of securing and protecting these rights “inviolate”:

The fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same statute I W. & M. st.2. c.2. and is indeed a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.[9]

Blackstone was noteably cited in DC v Heller.

Locke elaborated these views within the context of belief in God’s ultimate sovereignty, ownership, and law-order over all of creation:

Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself… so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.

Locke’s elaboration there and in the Second Treatise of Government is also noteworthy because it can exist even if you don’t believe and thereby don’t equate God’s gift of life with the morality of self defense.  If you are a die-hard atheist who believes totally in the accidental creation of the universe by the FSM or something, your survival – your own personal survival, is ultimately of paramount importance to you.  If you don’t believe in God, you still know that there’s something that came before the big bang, you still know there’s some Higgs’ boson or something out there left to discover, and the ultimate answer to existence (since you say no to God) means it’s left to be discovered.  In the meantime, you need to survive, learn, and most likely procreate so your descendants will learn from you and ultimately you’ll find that purpose.

Yeah, yeah, 42, but what’s the question?

Moving on…

Survival becomes, and is, an absolute moral.  Your life is the most important thing there is.

I mentioned Starship Troopers in the last post, and I’ll mention it here again.  Within the book (the movie is an abomination), there’s much discussion of how survival is the basis for all morals, and morality has become almost mathematical because of it.  Your life is the most important thing in the world.  But the value you put on your family’s life may exceed that you put on your own.  It doesn’t mean that yours is less valuable, it just means that you have taken it upon yourself to value their life more, and put your own at risk to protect them.  This starts with spouse and children (with whom you share a link to the future), but ultimately extends outwards to encompass all of your region, culture, society, and humankind.  It takes great understanding to put your own life at risk for someone you’ve never met, which is why this is such a virtuous thing to do.

And at the same time, it’s also why a tyranny that views even one life as unimportant (let alone millions) is an invalid entity – because that one life has value on its own.

Thus even if you choose the advancement of human knowledge as your deity instead of Yahweh, Jesus, Buddha, Vishnu, Ahura Mazda, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you can still find that these principles apply, and agree with the wisdom here:

Evil ever advances upon our families, churches, and states. Evil seeks positions of power, such as government, and from there seeks to eliminate the avenues of power that threaten it (an armed people). Thus tyrannical government seek to pass gun control laws.

“…and if you don’t have a AR-15, sell your cloak and buy one…”

Luke 22:36

Perhaps it’s important to note something else Heinlein put forth: that “an armed society is a polite society”.  Tyrants don’t try to oppress those who can fight back, just like bullies don’t torment those who fight back.  It’s a preemptive move against tyranny, and creates a more peaceful state.  No wars were ever started because a pacifist was too strong.

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Innocents Betrayed: The History of Gun Control

Produced by the JPFO and the late Aaron Zelman.  I’d seen it years ago (JPFO had it on their website for a long time), but it looks like somebody went to the work to upload it to youtube.  Take a few minutes and you’ll find yourself watching the whole thing.  It’s a very good look at the big picture and the long run view of why the Second Amendment and the citizens right to bear arms is so critical to freedom.

H/T Jawa Report.

The American Revolution Against British Gun Control

An excellent article by David Kopel.

This Article reviews the British gun control program that precipitated the American Revolution: the 1774 import ban on firearms and gunpowder; the 1774-75 confiscations of firearms and gunpowder; and the use of violence to effectuate the confiscations. It was these events that changed a situation of political tension into a shooting war. Each of these British abuses provides insights into the scope of the modern Second Amendment.

Furious at the December 1773 Boston Tea Party, Parliament in 1774 passed the Coercive Acts. The particular provisions of the Coercive Acts were offensive to Americans, but it was the possibility that the British might deploy the army to enforce them that primed many colonists for armed resistance. The Patriots of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, resolved: “That in the event of Great Britain attempting to force unjust laws upon us by the strength of arms, our cause we leave to heaven and our rifles.” A South Carolina newspaper essay, reprinted in Virginia, urged that any law that had to be enforced by the military was necessarily illegitimate.

The Royal Governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, had forbidden town meetings from taking place more than once a year. When he dispatched the Redcoats to break up an illegal town meeting in Salem, 3000 armed Americans appeared in response, and the British retreated. Gage’s aide John Andrews explained that everyone in the area aged 16 years or older owned a gun and plenty of gunpowder.

Military rule would be difficult to impose on an armed populace. Gage had only 2,000 troops in Boston. There were thousands of armed men in Boston alone, and more in the surrounding area. One response to the problem was to deprive the Americans of gunpowder.

…

Two days after Lord Dartmouth dispatched his disarmament recommendation, King George III and his ministers blocked importation of arms and ammunition to America. Read literally, the order merely required a permit to export arms or ammunition from Great Britain to America. In practice, no permits were granted.

Similar to the threats of ammunition taxes, restrictions, shipping bans, etc., that are going on today.  Same gun control plans, same tyrannical objectives.

The British government was not, in a purely formal sense, attempting to abolish the Americans’ common law right of self-defense. Yet in practice, that was precisely what the British were attempting. First, by disarming the Americans, the British were attempting to make the practical exercise of the right of personal self-defense much more difficult. Second, and more fundamentally, the Americans made no distinction between self-defense against a lone criminal or against a criminal government. To the Americans, and to their British Whig ancestors, the right of self-defense necessarily implied the right of armed self-defense against tyranny.

…

At Lexington and Concord, forcible disarmament had not worked out for the British. So back in Boston, Gage set out to disarm the Bostonians a different way.

On April 23, 1775, Gage offered the Bostonians the opportunity to leave town if they surrendered their arms. The Boston Selectmen voted to accept the offer, and within days, 2,674 guns were deposited, one gun for every two adult male Bostonians.

Gage thought that many Bostonians still had guns, and he refused to allow the Bostonians to leave.

Someone disarming you who doesn’t honor their word?  Naw, never happened before!

Contrast Massachusetts as a defender of liberty in the 1700s in the whole article (which I recommend reading) with anti-rights, pro-control Massachusetts of today.

To the Americans of the Revolution and the Founding Era, the theory of some late-20th Century courts that the Second Amendment is a “collective right” and not an “individual right” might have seemed incomprehensible. The Americans owned guns individually, in their homes. They owned guns collectively, in their town armories and powder houses. They would not allow the British to confiscate their individual arms, nor their collective arms; and when the British tried to do both, the Revolution began. The Americans used their individual arms and their collective arms to fight against the confiscation of any arms. Americans fought to provide themselves a government that would never perpetrate the abuses that had provoked the Revolution.

Nuts!

Just as a reminder, when Americans are facing down totalitarian regimes, freedom still usually wins out, even against heavy odds.