Original Intent: What the Founders Had to Say About Guns

The US Constitution took effect March 4, 1789 – and the Bill of Rights a while later on December 15, 1791. Among other freedoms, this included the Second Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms. But now it’s 2025, more than 230 years removed from that great work of America’s Founding Fathers. So where do our gun rights stand – and what would those men think if they could see us today?

The Birth of Gun Control Meant Death to Liberty

In 1934 – more than 140 years after the Bill of Rights and nearly a century after the last remaining Founding Father, James Madison, died in 1836 – the nation’s first successful gun control bill became law. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, and he led a trifecta in the Swamp that included a supermajority in the Senate and a large majority in the House. The gun control that they passed regulated, for the first time, various types of firearms differently. Even with the majorities necessary to bulldoze the minority opposition, they knew an outright ban wouldn’t fly. So, instead, they passed a bill technically regulating the sale and taxation of certain types of arms – and, in practice, pricing out most Americans from owning them.

Three decades later, Democrats once again held both houses of Congress and the presidency. And, once again, they capitalized on a series of crises to justify further restricting the right to keep and bear arms. With the Gun Control Act of 1968, we got the establishment of prohibited persons – entire groups of people who would be stripped of the right to be armed. Guns could no longer be bought and sold commercially without going through a federally licensed dealer, in person. In 1993, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and the background check as a way to weed out prohibited persons. This was followed quickly by the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which made certain semi-automatic firearms illegal for anyone, though it expired in 2004. Democrats have been trying ever since to pass another ban – this time, without a sunset clause. Every gun control law passed in this nation’s history – and the time between them seems to shrink with each one – brings us farther from the Founders’ vision of liberty. Yes, in the last few years, Supreme Court rulings, executive actions, and the spread of the constitutional carry movement through the states all seemed to push back on this slow march to disarmament. But freedom today doesn’t mean what it did to the Founders. They envisioned something quite different, and nothing paints a better picture of that vision than their own words.

An American Vision for Freedom

On April 5, 1769, George Washington wrote a letter to George Mason. In it, he said: “At a time when our lordly Masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom, it seems highly necessary that something shou’d be done to avert the stroke and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our Ancestors; but the manner of doing it to answer the purpose effectually is the point in question. “That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment, to use arms in defense of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion.” Here, the man who would become the first president of the United States expressed a fundamental American idea: that life and liberty must be defended by any means necessary – even up to and including deadly force. As recorded in the National Archives, Mason immediately responded and assured Washington of his agreement. Even after a successful revolution, while serving as president, George Washington told Congress in 1790 that a free people “ought not only to be armed, but disciplined.” Mason would go on to defend the idea of an armed citizenry. In the June 12, 1776, Virginia Declaration of Rights, he wrote: "That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” Later, during the Virginia Ratifying Convention on June 4, 1788, Mason clarified his position: “I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.” And he was fiercely opposed to disarming the citizenry. “To disarm the people … is the most effectual way to enslave them,” he said on June 14, 1788, during the debates over the Federal Constitution. Mason wasn’t the only Founding Father to feel that way. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his first draft of the Virginia Constitution in 1776: “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” He said in one letter to James Madison: “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery,” and in another: “What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.” He advocated everyday carry in a letter to Peter Carr, writing that a man’s gun should be “your constant companion of your walks.” Much later in life, Jefferson wrote in an 1824 letter to John Cartwright: “The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) asserts that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.” Patrick Henry warned against those who would push gun control. “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty,” he said during his speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1778. “Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.” There are many other great quotes from the Founders, but for the sake of brevity, let this section conclude with the Second Amendment to the US Constitution:

“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.”

And who is the militia? As George Mason explained, we all are – the citizenry of the United States.  

Dig Deeper Into the Themes Discussed in This Article!

 

Liberty Vault: The Bill of Rights

Liberty Vault: The Constitution of the United States