Shooting for the truth

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In 2000, when Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles published a prize-winning book that argued that firearm ownership was rare in early America, Clayton Cramer was one of the researchers who helped debunk those arguments.

Now, in "Armed America: The Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie," Mr. Cramer documents the history of the nation's long love affair with firearms.

The following are excerpts of a recent e-mail interview with Mr. Cramer, who lives near Boise, Idaho:

Question: How much of America's legal, political and social views of firearms ownership was because of the nation's British origins?

Answer: When the first colonists arrived here, the answer would be "only a little." Gun ownership before 1689 was tightly regulated in Britain. The usual argument was that since the poor weren't allowed to hunt anyway, they didn't have a need for guns. But it wasn't the hunting of game that concerned the English upper classes, but the fear of revolution.

America became a gun-owning society because of fear of an Indian attack, fear of an attack by Britain's European enemies the Dutch Navy tried to invade Virginia, for example, on a couple of occasions in the 17th century and later fear of slave revolt. All of these led the colonial governments to impose militia duty and gun ownership on the free men (eventually, only free white men).

Hunting was very common. Hunting put meat on the table. Hunting was also common to protect livestock and people from the larger predators, and to deal with pests that damaged crops. A number of colonies required taxes to be paid partly in crow heads and squirrel pelts. The primary reason the colonists hunted, however, was for sport.

The English Bill of Rights of 1689 enshrined a right to bear arms into English law. By the time of the American Revolution, English legal books such as Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" described the right to arms for self-defense or for revolution as a right of Englishmen, and this reinforced the American experience that gun ownership was tied to the notion of citizenship.

Q: What was the role of firearms ownership by ordinary citizens in shaping the American Revolution?

A: It made it possible. It was more than a year after the start of the war before the U.S. was able to import firearms and ammunition from Europe, and Britain had embargoed all sales of guns and ammunition for more than a year before the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington, Mass. The Battle of Lexington, of course, happened because the British government attempted to seize cannon and gunpowder stored at Concord. Throughout the Revolution, the widespread ownership of guns throughout the colonies and the extensive gun-manufacturing industry of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, made it possible for the Americans to take on the best European army of the era and win (with a little help from the French).