"Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" (Elliot, 1836) So said Patrick Henry, in a speech to the Virginia Convention in 1775. The words, which were uttered 228 years ago, still apply today. What would the founding fathers, such as Henry, say if they saw how their words and meanings are being distorted today?.
The first incidence of Gun control in the United States was on April 10th, 1671. On this day, in Taunton, Massachusetts, the Wampanoag Indian tribe signed a treaty which forced them to surrender their English Arms (firearms) to the residents of Plymouth, Massachusetts. As with all gun control, this ended in tragedy. In 1675, a war broke out between the colonists and the Wampanoag and Narragansett tribes. Metacom, leader of the Wampanoags, led his Indian confederacy into a war meant to save the tribes from extinction. Losses to both sides were heavy, but English firepower proved too much for the Indians; both tribes were wiped out in a matter of months. Metacom was killed, and his head was publicly exhibited at Plymouth for over twenty years. (####2).
While this is an extreme example of what can occur when gun control is enacted, it was the beginning of a terrible trend, which plagues our country, and the world today. In the past several decades, each time a notable and/or horrid event occurs involving firearms, it seems that lawmakers scramble to write more laws, and make more firearms illegal. When Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed man in Hungerford, England, killed 17 people with a Kalashnikov rifle in 1987, English Parliament decided to enact a complete ban on all handguns in their country.