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16 J. on Firearms & Pub. Pol'y 1 (2004)
Colonial Firearm Regulation

handle is hein.journals/jfpp16 and id is 3 raw text is: Colonial Firearm Regulation Clayton E. Cramer Recently published scholarship concerning the regulation offirearms in Colonial America claims that because Colonial governments distrusted the free population with guns, the laws required guns to be stored centraljy, and were not generaly allowed in private hands. According to this view, even those guns allowed in private hands were always considered the propery of the government. This Article examines the laws of the American colonies and demonstrates that at least for the free population, gun control laws were neither laisseZfaire nor restrictive. If Colonial governments evinced any distrust of the free population concerning guns, it was a fear that not enough freemen would own and cary guns. Thus, the governments imposed mandatory gun ownership and carriage laws. Clayton E. Cramer is an independent scholar who took the leading role in exposing the Michael Bellesiles hoax. His website is: www. daytoncramer. com. I. THE LEGAL SIGNIFICANCE OF COLONIAL FIREARM REGULATION TODAY In much the same way that an understanding of the limits of free speech in Colonial America may provide insights into the intent of Congress and the states when they adopted the First Amendment, so an understanding of colonial firearms regulation has the potential to illuminate our understanding of the limits of the right protected by the Second Amendment. What types of firearms laws were common, and might therefore have been considered within the legitimate scope of governmental regulation? In the last several years, widely publicized scholarship by Michael Bellesiles has asserted that the English colonies strictly regulated the individual possession and use of firearms. While acknowledging that the English government ordered the colonists to own firearms for the public defense as a cost-cutting measure, he asserts: At the same time, legislators feared that gun-toting freemen might, under special circumstances, pose a

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