In the article “Gun Ownership in Early America: A Survey of Manuscript Militia Returns” by Robert Churchill, he discusses how gun ownership in the early 18th and 19th centuries was scarce and at times the armed militias were the only people who had guns at all. It was because of this that the government made gun ownership exceptional. This is different from today when gun ownership is everywhere. Due to the high concentration of guns sometimes it is hard to count how many are sold in the United States every year. To learn that guns, at one time, were almost non-existent is almost hard to believe.
In the article, the author talks about Michael Bellesiles a historian who first wrote on gun ...view middle of the document...
Gun ownership then was special; it meant something, now with the amount of guns on the street and the heinous acts that are carried out with them, owning a gun is more like a burden.
Unlike the 18th and 19th centuries, the government today is much against gun ownership. So much so that they have enacted gun control laws that would take all guns away from American citizens. Though guns can be dangerous in the wrong hands, Americans have the right to bear arms. To take gun ownership away would mean destroying the Constitutional right of every American. Instead of gun control everyone that buys a gun they should undergo an intense back ground check and be required to attend gun ownership classes to learn how to safely use the weapon.
In the article it is stated that most guns in the 18th and 19th centuries were owned by younger men and boys. This would suggest that younger men in those centuries were more mature than those of today. Back then people had to fend for themselves because money was not as prevalent as it is today, so owning a gun was more of a necessity. Now when younger people possess a fire arm the outcome is more violent. The damage inflicted by young people with guns in the last decade has been some of the worst America has ever witnessed. The Sandy Hook shooting being the most recent string of school related gun violence. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this type of behavior was never recorded, but the population was sparser and children then did not have violent videogames, TV and movies.
A lot of states, while the revolutionary progressed, failed to report their return of arms. Thus state officials took it upon themselves to go door to door taking inventory of all war ready mean...
