On April 19, it'll be the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which kicked off the American Revolution. For me, the day has an almost sacred appeal. It's the day that the greatest nation on the face of the planet took its first steps toward birth. An unknown shooter fired the round that, ultimately, culminated in creating the nation that would defeat the Nazis and the Soviets.
Yet many will not recall why the British showed up in the first place.
The answer, plain and simple, is gun control.
The British Army was sent to Lexington and Concord to seize cannons and gunpowder being kept there in preparation for what everyone believed to be an inevitable war for independence. The Crown was less than thrilled by this idea and sought to use the army to prevent it by taking guns that could be used to oust the British.
Americans were...resistant, let's say, to letting the British take the guns, and after a tense standoff and a shot from some unknown party, the battle commenced.
It wasn't a major battle for any reason other than it was the first, but it's something we need to keep in mind.
This wasn't someone sent to arrest people saying mean things about King George. It wasn't an attempt to shut down a church. It wasn't the British kicking in doors to try and look for evidence they could use to prosecute some poor soul.
It was an attempt to disarm people who were unhappy with their tyrannical government. It was an attempt to take away their means of fighting back against despotism.
The colonists had asked nicely for a seat at the table. They'd have happily stayed loyal to the crown had the crown been loyal to them. Instead, the king decided we were undeserving of truly governing ourselves, to have a say in taxation and other laws that affected us, and his minions here sought to make sure we could do nothing about it.
So we shot them.
That day, 250 years ago, marked the beginning of the gun debate, in a way. It was an attempt at gun control that sparked the war. Sure, if it weren't that, it probably would have been something else, but it wasn't.
When gun control advocates talk about how we don't need what they call "weapons of war," I can't help but think of British troops deciding that colonists had no need for their "weapons of war" in the form of cannons they legally owned.
Some have talked quite openly about coming to get our guns. They've talked about how, because we haven't bent the knee and embraced gun control, they'll come and take them by force.
Doing so has a precedent.
So does shooting those who would attempt to do so.
Luckily, we still have a say in our governance, so we have other tools available to us first. We can and will use them to make certain no uniformed individual seeks to deprive law-abiding men and women of their right to keep and bear arms without due process of law, though with varying levels of success.
Yet if that fails, we know what our forefathers did.
We are the spiritual descendants of the men who stood at Lexington and Concord. We are the intellectual offspring of the men who inspired them to stand there, believing liberty or death was a true and honorable choice.
I will remember what they did, what it led to, and will remind my children of what those men gave us.
I will spend my life making sure we don't let it slip away, either.
That starts with our right to keep and bear arms, the insurance policy for our civil liberties.