“1: A tyrannical central government occupied Boston, declared martial law, and disarmed the residents.
2: That same government sent army Regulars to confiscate privately owned arms including cannons from the residents outside of Boston.
3: Those outside of Boston who wished to relieve the residents of Boston from the occupation by that central government arranged to take by force the cannon from Fort Ticonderoga and used those arms to coerce the central government into ceasing their occupation.
4: The Founders of our nation implemented the Second Amendment, at least in part, to insure that future depredations by a central government could be met by force without the necessity of stealing arms from that central government prior to taking effective action.
This is what I intended to communicate. Do you see inaccuracies in the 4 statements above?” [William Tell, post 130]
Yes. Several: errors in detail and in concept.
Item 1: The raids by British Army troops in Boston were mounted to grab arms & munitions stored in local armories of outlying municipalities, not the privately owned fowling pieces, swords, tomahawks, or spontoons that might be held by any townsfolk or farmers. Just what the particulars of ownership in these cases remains obscure.
Item 2: The British were more concerned about Colonial plotters who might smuggle arms & munitions into Boston, than they were about whatever hardware might be lying about in city homes & buildings. Boston’s population was less than 20,000 back then, by the way.
Item 3: The American taking of Ft Ticonderoga on 10 May 1775 was in no way preplanned, nor did any American that spring look on the fortress as a source of any means to force the British troops to leave Boston. The enthusiasm of April 1775 was admirable, but the lack of organization and planning would frighten most moderns. Attempts were made to inventory the fort’s equipage but foundered due to lack of interest and spotty planning. Not until mid-November 1775 did George Washington issue orders to Henry Knox to fetch what artillery pieces he could from the fort.
Washington took other measures to augment the Continental Army’s slender reserves of munitions, and they are poorly remembered today. Concealing the initiative from the Continental Congress, he commissioned several privateering vessels and ordered them to capture resupply ships inbound to Boston from the British Isles. These efforts met with skimpy success and in some cases went dangerously awry.
Item 4 is more conjectural. Founders & populace did believe in the importance of an armed populace - as do I - but the idea that the fledgling United States beat the British because individually armed Americans took actions the British were unable to counter is not supported by the facts.
The entire notion that founding of the USA was preordained or inevitable is problematic. Belief in such is neither provable nor disprovable on a practical level; it might be of use in indoctrinating the young in the early stages of education, but it appears to be encouraging nothing so much as complacency, self-righteousness and laziness today. To look upon the days of the Founding and declare the outcome “inevitable” does the Founding generation a disservice, belittling the enormity of the task they faced and the amounts of courage, insight, and expertise required to do what they really did do.
Please explain, then, how they beat the British.
You credit Washington with the idea of using the guns from Fort Ticonderoga but downplay the fact that he didn't buy them on the open market or make use of privately owned guns.
Please explain why the Founders included the Second Amendment.