On this day, 248 years ago, the government attempted to confiscate the firearms of the citizens of two backwater farming communities in Massachusetts.

The response was the “shot heard around the world” at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The British officer in command of the field in Lexington and Concord (Major John Pitcairn), would be felled within two months at the Battle of Breed’s Hill (also called Bunker Hill). Felled by a shot fired by a freed slave, Peter Salem.

Exemplifying James Burgh’s earlier observation: “The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave.” Although the English Constitution of 1689 enumerated the Rights of Englishmen to keep and bear arms, practical history has shown that we only have the Rights that we are willing to fight.

Currently, the UK is mostly disarmed, and engaged in “knife turn-ins” while police conduct “weapons sweeps” of residences, confiscating hammers, screw drivers, and anything a wild imagination can determine to be a weapon. Despite these measures, the violent crime rate, (stabbing sprees, acid attacks, assaults, home invasions) now exceed that of NYC (despite the differences in reporting), despite the lack of firearms that were already turned in a generation ago.

It is the character of the individual that society produces, not the tools that those individuals employ. It is also the character of the individuals in government who either seek to empower the individual to self defense, or seek to operantly condition society to be defenseless against aggression, that matters.

We can be a nation of Minutemen, rising to the occasion to aid our fellow man in defense, or we can be a nation of sheep, always in need of protection by government programs to provide a “sense” of safety, while providing a reality of servitude. “Both Oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the People and therefore deprive them of their Arms” -Aristotle