Gun Ownership

Privately Owned Guns in War

The majority of the firearms used to fight most early American wars belonged to the soldiers carrying them. Although the British government typically provided guns for its soldiers in its standing armies, soldiers’ pay was often docked to cover the cost of the firearms because ownership was thought to give soldiers incentive to take better care of their weapons. Most colonies had laws requiring all ablebodied men, beginning at age 16 and lasting until at least age 50, to join militias (locally trained and operated military units). These laws also mandated that each man furnish himself with an appropriate firearm, as well as gunpowder, shot, and cartridge boxes. Not all men complied, and many towns did supply guns to their militias, although they also often sold the soldiers the guns. Although many governmentowned arms not sold to soldiers were kept in designated storage areas, or returned after the end of fighting, publicly owned arms have appeared in lists of private belongings, suggesting that some of these weapons may have been treated as if they were privately owned.

Since colonial defense centered around the militia unit, gun ownership was crucial to winning early wars. Many of the wars fought between white settlers and Native Americans, such as the Pequot War (1637) and King Philip's War, or Metacomet's War, (1675–76) relied exclusively on the militia of the colonies involved and thus were heavily supported by private gun ownership. After 1689 the colonies were drawn into a series of global conflicts, including King William's War (1689–97), Queen Anne's War (1702–14), and the French and Indian War (1754–63) for which they received some British assistance but still heavily utilized the militia. During the Revolutionary War (1775–83), armed militia led the early fighting, most famously the minutemen who fought in the first battles at Lexington and Concord. Later the militia provided crucial support to the Continental Army and did so with privately owned weapons. Although many supporters of the Continental Army, including Gen. George Washington, disliked the disorderly and often disobedient militia, the militia system garnered enough support for the right to bear arms to be placed in the Bill of Rights, proposed in 1789.

When fighting the British during both the American Revolution and the War of 1812 (1812–14), the privately owned firearms of American militiamen caused logistical problems but also offered certain advantages. Men brought with them a wide variety of guns, each of which required a different caliber of bullet and charge of gunpowder—making the coordination and standardization of supplies difficult. Also, any militiaman using a rifle could not stand up to open battle situations because rifles took a great deal of time to reload. In contrast, the British government issued the smoothbore Brown Bess, which it produced to shoot a uniform-sized ball and to operate on a uniform powder charge. The smoothbores could be reloaded and fired a few times a minute. However, one advantage that the hodgepodge of militia firearms held over the Brown Bess was their often superior accuracy. This made the militia ideal for sniper fighting but relatively poor and close to defenseless in open battle. For much of the war, but especially after the battle of [Page 335]Saratoga, the Continental Army relied on French (and other foreign powers’) supplies of standardized Charleville muskets, which made this force more effective on the open battlefield and supply distribution much easier.

...