Guns & America In 1791 Were Worlds Away From The Guns & America Of Today
What Was the World like for the People Who Voted to Ratify the Constitution in 1791?
By David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
Lots of people are arguing about guns and the Second Amendment, but nobody is talking about what the world was like for the people who voted to ratify the Constitution in December 1791, how they viewed guns, and how their 1791 world compares to our American society today.
That’s what I’m going to do here.
In 1791 Guns Were Everyday Tools
In 1791 most Americans were farmers, hunters or trappers. Most households had a gun because people needed a rifle to put food on the table and protect their crops and livestock from predatory animals.
For most 1791 Americans, a rifle was an everyday, vital tool principally used to kill animals.
Today Guns Are Rarely-Used Emergency Equipment Or Toys
Other than members of law enforcement, today almost no one uses firearms on a daily or weekly basis. Most guns owned by Americans sit in a drawer or a closet and aren’t fired even once a year. Some people hunt for fun, but most of those hunters don’t fire their guns more often than a ten or twenty days per year.
In 1791 You Couldn’t Use A Gun Without Training
In 1791, loading, aiming, and firing a gun was a complicated process that took about thirty seconds per shot. You simply couldn’t do it effectively without training and practice.
In 1791 you just, plain couldn’t use a gun without being well trained in how to use it properly.
Today Most Gun Owners Have No Training
Today, anyone can pick up and fire a gun with no training, and most gun owners have never had any formal training in the safe and proper use and storage of their gun.
In 1791 It Was Almost Impossible To Accidentally Shoot Someone
While a 1791 farmer could deliberately shoot a person with his rifle, he couldn’t accidentally shoot himself or almost anyone else with it.
Today People Are Accidentally Shot All The Time
Today, it’s ridiculously easy to accidentally shoot yourself and others with a modern gun.
In 1791 You Could Fire Only Once Every Thirty Seconds
In 1791, it took the average gun owner about thirty seconds to load and fire his gun, and it took great skill practice to be able to hit what he was aiming at.
Today You Can Fire Fifteen Times Or More In A Few Seconds
Today, anyone can pick up a gun and fire a dozen or more rounds in only a few seconds and hit a man-sized target with at least one of them from fifteen or twenty feet away.
In 1791 Guns Were Expensive
In 1791 the average semi-skilled worker earned about $.58/DAY. A rifle cost about $12 or about 21 days labor. At $15/hour X 8 hours X 21 days that’s about $2,500 in today’s money.
In 1791 guns were an expensive tool that were used by responsible, hard-working, non-criminal adults to put food on the table and protect their livestock. Mature, responsible, hard-working adults.
Guns weren’t acquired by poor people or by people who didn’t need them. No one spend five weeks wages to buy a rifle on a whim or to shoot it just for fun.
Today Guns Are Cheap
Today, guns that can fire multiple rounds in only a few seconds can be bought for one day’s wages, cheap enough so that they aren’t necessarily purchased for serious purposes, but usually as either rarely-used emergency equipment or as toys.
Today, most gun owners either bought their gun for home defense and it sits unused in a drawer for years on end, or they bought it as a toy either to blast away at targets or to kill animals for the fun of the hunt rather than to keep their family from starvation, a toy, not a tool.
In 1791 A Crazy Person Could Only Kill One Person
In 1791 a maniac could get off only one shot into a crowd, then while he was spending thirty seconds trying to reload the rest of the people in the crowd or in the street or at his place of work would take his gun away from him.
Today, A Crazy Person Can Kill Dozens Of People
As we have seen many, many times, today a crazy person can kill dozens of innocent people in a few seconds with a gun.
1791 People Could Never Imagine What Guns Are Like & How They Are Used Today
The citizens who ratified the Constitution in 1791 viewed “arms” as single-shot rifles used by trained, responsible, adults of some means, for serious purposes.
They could never have imagined a world where untrained children, criminals and lunatics would have unfettered access to weapons that could fire fifty rounds in only a few seconds, hitting targets hundreds of feet away.
They would have dismissed as lunacy the idea that an untrained twelve-year-old could pull out a concealed hand gun and fire fifteen shots as fast as he could pull the trigger.
They would have greeted with flat-out disbelief the claim that it would be common, COMMON, for random, untrained people, some of them teenagers, to kill ten, twenty, thirty innocent people, strangers, in a mass shooting for no reason other than a desire for attention, maniacal rage or no known or knowable reason at all.
Had they known that the Second Amendment would be used as the legal justification for allowing these sorts of things to go on, for the unrestricted possession of these sorts of weapons by anyone who had a few dollars, one has to doubt that they would ever have supported it in its current form.
In 1791 10 Armed Men Were Just As Powerful As 10 Soldiers
In 1791 armies were equipped with basically three weapons — single-shot rifles, swords, and cannons. While cannons were useful for shelling a fortified position or attacking a large concentration of soldiers on a battlefield, they didn’t decide wars.
Most conflicts were won or lost by men with rifles shooting at other men with similar rifles.
In 1791, given relatively equal numbers, a bunch of farmers with rifles might defeat an equal-sized bunch of soldiers with rifles.
In 1791 a civilian militia armed with single-shot rifles could take on and possibly defeat an equal-sized unit of the best army in the world which was also armed with single-shot rifles.
Today 10 Armed Men Have No Chance Against 10 Soldiers
Today, armies attack with armored vehicles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, planes with rockets, high-fire-rate gatling guns and other sophisticated weapons.
Today, semi-automatic small arms are essentially irrelevant in any conflict with a real military force.
While under the right circumstances a hundred 1792 militiamen might defeat a hundred British soldiers because their weapons were the same, today a bunch of civilians armed with hand guns and semi-automatic rifles are meat through a grinder against any modern military force.
Today, a professional military force encountering a civilian militia armed with semi-automatic rifles is a hot knife through tissue paper.
In 1791 America Was Protected By State Militias
When the Bill of Rights was ratified in December of 1791 the United States was a huge country (about 430,000 square miles) with a population of only about four million people.
The only way to defend a country as large and sparsely populated as the United States was with local militias that could be called up where and when needed.
Moreover, except for this new American democracy, in 1791 almost all governments were monarchies. Americans had seen European standing armies that kings used to oppress the population.
Americans feared that an American standing army might become the tool of a totalitarian government, and they didn’t want the United States to have one. Instead, Americans expected each state to be defended by its own, local, State militia.
The Federalists Advocated A Strong Federal Government
But that was a problem for Madison, Hamilton and the Federalists who had seen the failure of the weak American central government under the Articles of Confederation.
As their name implies, the Federalists wanted a strong central government under the proposed new Constitution, a Federal government.
In the event of an invasion they wanted the Federal government to be in charge of defending the country. Also, they feared that without having soldiers under its command, this new government might fall apart or dissolve in the face of regional conflicts.
How was the Federal government going to be able to put down invasions, revolts, insurrections and the like without a standing army under its own control?
The Federalists Wanted A Military Force Under Federal Control
The answer that Madison, Hamilton and the Federalists came up with was that the State militias, which they referred to as “well regulated militias,” could be placed under Federal control in the event of an invasion or insurrection.
This plan was embodied in the list of the powers granted to Congress in the proposed Constitution:
Article I, Section 8:
“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
“To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”
The Federalists’ fear of an insurrection against the federal government proved to be well founded as in 1794 George Washington used the authority given him by Congress pursuant to Article I, Section 8 to call up the militias of six states to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion.
The Anti-Federalists Feared That A Future Federal Government Might Disarm The Militias, Leaving A Standing Federal Army In Control Of The Country
But the opponents of a strong central government, the Anti-Federalists, were still concerned. Nothing in the Constitution prevented the Federal government from some day creating a standing army.
What if the Federal government created a standing army and then made it illegal for the citizens to own guns? That would effectively disarm the State militias and with the state militias disarmed, the Federal army would be able to do whatever it wanted.
The Anti-Federalist logic was:
- A standing Federal army could be a danger
- Armed State militias are needed to counter that danger
- Since the State militias didn’t have a stockpile of their own guns, the state militias need citizens who already have guns that they can bring with them when they’re called up
- Therefore, we need to protect the right of citizens to own guns so that they will have the guns needed to field an armed militia.
This wasn’t a concern for the Federalists because under their plan the Federal government would be relying on armed state militias to protect it, and they, too, didn’t like the idea of having a standing Federal army.
The 2nd Amendment Was Created To Guarantee The Continued Existence Of An Armed Militia Under The States’ Control
Essentially, Madison said to the anti-federalists, “Look, we have no intention of disarming the militias, but if you’re really worried about it we’ll write it into the Constitution that the Federal government will not take away people’s guns.”
In order to overcome this anti-federalist concern of the state militias being disarmed, Madison included the Second Amendment to guarantee that there would always be armed men available to staff the state militias.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The purpose of the Second Amendment wasn’t to guarantee a lone individual’s right to own a gun but rather to assure the anti-federalists that the States would always have access to armed men under the command of officers they chose as a bulwark against any future power grab by some future standing Federal army.
The Second Amendment was enacted to allay the fears of the anti-federalists by guaranteeing them the continued availability of armed men to staff the State militias.
Times Changed & Military Power Passed To The Federal Gov’t
But, as time passed, Americans became less fearful of having a standing army. In the years between 1871 and 1897 the U.S. standing army had grown to between 25,000 and 30,000 men.
In the early 1900s Congress renamed all the State militias as the National Guard and provided that all weapons used by the National Guard would be furnished by the Federal government, making it illegal for any militia members to actually use their own guns.
By the end of 1916 the entire scheme organized by the Federalists — no standing army and state militias defending the country with men armed with personal weapons — was as dead as the dodo, replaced by a Federal standing army and state units of the National Guard armed with weapons provided by the Federal government.
Once the link between Private Citizens With Guns –> Armed State Militias was broken, once whether or not private citizens owned guns or not was irrelevant to the existence to an armed State militia, Madison’s reason for writing the Second Amendment disappeared.
Maybe not your reason, but we’re not concerned with the reasons some people have today for liking the Second Amendment. We’re concerned with the reason Madison wrote it and the 1791 the citizens ratified it, and that reason was in order to defuse the opposition of the anti-federalists to guarantee the continued existence of armed State militias as a counter to the Federal government.
Today Private Ownership Of Guns Is Not A Bulwark Against Tyranny
You can find all kinds of quotes from the late 1700s saying that everybody having a gun is a good idea and that an armed population will protect the people from tyranny, but you have to consider what guns and America were like when those statements were made and compare them to the world we live in today.
Those people were talking about responsible, mature, adults living in a largely agrarian, rural society who had the substantial amount of money required to purchase an expensive a single-shot pistol or a single-shot rifle.
They were not talking about any and every person in a city of over a million people who could scrape together a few dollars being able to carry a concealed weapon that could fire 15 or more rounds in only a few seconds.
They were not talking about any and every person, including any of the hundreds of thousands of criminals, minors and mentally ill people, being able to anonymously purchase weapons that can fire fifty shots in a few seconds into a crowd of people hundreds of feet away.
They were not talking about any person of any age or condition having access to one of these weapons in a society where tens or hundreds or thousands of people regularly gather in huge public events.
Between 1800 when these “guns are good for everybody” statements were made and today
- Times have changed.
- Guns have changed.
- The concentration of people has changed.
- The number of criminal and crazy people has changed
- The existence of a fragile human infrastructure that can be shattered by one person with an automatic weapon has changed.
None of that could have even been dreamt of by the people living in 1791.
Today
- Guns today are not the same.
- The population density today is not the same.
- The number of crazy people and criminals is not the same.
- The density of our cities and the complexity of our infrastructure is not the same.
These 1800 comments recommending that every adult who can afford to carry an expensive single-shot pistol have one to ward off marauders while traveling on a rural dirt road become truly reckless and dangerous if you try to apply them to everybody in automobiles carrying cheap hand guns with which they can blaze away whenever somebody cuts them off in traffic.
These comments about what a good idea it is for every man to be armed in order to fight tyranny might mean something in the context of farmers armed with single-shot rifles being able to ambush British soldiers armed the same way, but they become less than stupid when used to justify the idea that we need people owning small arms so that they can fight off trained soldiers armed with tanks, RPGs and machine guns.
The idea that citizens have the right to defend their freedom with guns may make some sense in the context of a population being ruled by a far-away parliament which they have no say in electing, but that notion becomes truly outrageous and wrong when it’s used to justify owning unregistered guns in preparation for an armed rebellion against an elected government whose laws the rebels don’t like.
That’s terrorism, not freedom.
What Makes Sense Today
Before you get to drive a car, you must be trained to properly drive a car.
Before you get to buy a semi-automatic weapon, you should be trained to properly use and store that weapon.
Before you get to drive a car, you have to get a license.
Before you get to own a gun, you should have to get a license.
If you’re physically or mentally unfit to drive a car, you can’t get a license.
If you’re physically or mentally unfit to use a gun, you shouldn’t be able to get a license.
If you drive a car recklessly, criminally, or while drunk, you lose your license.
If you use your gun recklessly or criminally, or while drunk you should lose your license.
If you own a car, you need to register it.
If you own a gun, you should have to register it.
Just because your car is licensed doesn’t mean that the government is scheming to take it away from you.
Just because your gun is licensed doesn’t mean the government is scheming to take it away from you.
Times have changed. It’s not 1791 anymore.
— David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
