Taking thoughtful aim at history

Three recent thoughtful letters to the BDN have been interrelated. Two referred to Shays’s Rebellion, which occurred in late 1786 and early 1787; the author of one of those letters moved from that rebellion to the Second Amendment to defend the right of Americans to own guns. The author of the third letter moved from an attack on the Million Mom March to the Second Amendment and argued that government controls over gun ownership violates the Bill of Rights.

The Rev. Mark Worth (July 19) correctly noted that Daniel Shays and the debtor farmers who rebelled with him were losing their farms because of an economic depression in the 1780s and that Shays’s Rebellion helped bring about the adoption of the constitution we live under. But he wrongly blames the rebellion on our government under the Articles of Confederation and wrongly argues that the rebellion was “a symptom of the problems of the Articles.”

There were two major causes of the economic plight of Shaysites. First, America had just survived a long war fought mostly in America. It was followed by a depression. No government could have prevented it.

Second, unlike other state governments, the conservative Massachusetts government refused to aid its debtor citizens.

True, the federal government was not much help. Pretending that Massachusetts needed assistance to deal with uppity native Americans so as not to be seen as interfering in a state’s internal affairs (how often has our government blamed “outsiders” for civil unrest?) Congress tried to appropriate funds to raise troops. In reality, Massachusetts needed no help, which brings me to John Hubbard’s letter (July 20).

Mr. Hubbard argues that “anti-gunners” don’t understand American history and do not know what the Second Amendment means. He refers to a recent book, Arming America, suggesting that the author says that early Americans didn’t have guns. That’s clearly wrong, Mr. Hubbard notes, since without guns we wouldn’t have beat the British in the Revolution. Apparently, the Rev. Worth was one of those erring gun opponents since, according to Mr. Hubbard, he had said the Shays’s rebels “were not armed.” To prove his point, he quotes George Richards Minor’s contemporary history of Shays’s Rebellion.

Minor referred to “armed insurgents.” Furthermore, Mr. Hubbard notes, they must have been armed since it took a force of 4,400 men to put them down.

There are a number of problems here. One should be suspicious of Minor’s book since Minor was a steadfast opponent of Shays. Moreover, the Rev. Worth had only said that the Shaysites “lacked firearms,” and he was right. Some of them had old guns, but not everyone, which was whey they marched on an arsenal, where they were soundly routed by a well-armed militia force of a thousand. While the legislature authorized a force of 4,400 men, only 3,000 (many of them Boston servants) could be raised, and they were paid for by wealthy Boston merchants. Even the 3,000 had little to do, for the rebellion was largely over after the failed attack on the arsenal.

Shays’s Rebellion did help bring about a new federal constitution, but only because it was blown out of all proportion by people who feared some of the changes the Revolution had wrought.

And now the Second Amendment. Mr. Hubbard rightly questions the validity of Michael Bellisiles’s new book, Arming America, although Bellesiles, having written a book on the Revolution, knows why the colonists won their freedom. More importantly he does not argue that early Americans did not have guns.

He does argue that far fewer people owned guns than we had been led to believe and that the love of the gun so evident in America today did not develop until after the Civil War. The point is certainly an important one.

It is easier to interpret the Second Amendment as guaranteeing all people a right to own arms if guns were widely owned when the Amendment was adopted.

Bellisiles’s book has been heavily criticized, by scholars doing what they do best: publicly examining evidence and offering their conclusions for others to examine. Unfortunately some gun enthusiasts have taken more extreme action, using the Internet to orchestrate serious harassment of Bellesiles and his family.

John Sovis (July 21) also invokes the Second Amendment. Mr. Sovis criticizes the Million Mom March for its criticism of the machine gun shoot and expo in Dover-Foxcroft. With “little regard for the … Second Amendment,” the group’s real agenda, he said, was to promote “the licensing of gun owners and … the registration of all handguns.”

People have been disagreeing about the meaning of the Second Amendment for a long time. While its wording seems clearcut, its meaning is apparently not.

“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.”

Emphasizing the first part of the sentence some people connect gun ownership with a trained militia, which obviously suggests to them that government has a right to regulate and control guns. Others emphasize the second part of the sentence, so much so that during the recent meeting of the Legislature Rep. Edward Povich argued that even to protect abused wives one couldn’t take guns away from men against whom there were only temporary orders of protection for that would violate the Constitution (BDN, May 17).

Of course, this is not the place to resolve these conflicting interpretations, although it might be worth pointing out that of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution only the second explains why the right is necessary, that is, there is a need for a well-regulated militia. There is no explanation for why we need a free press or freedom of religion or the right to be secure against unreasonable searches.

It is worth pointing out as well, as Bellesiles does, that the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 (Maine was then still part of Massachusetts) included a similar clause: “The people have a right to keep and bear arms for the common defense.”

While I would argue that it is wrong to read the Second Amendment as though the opening phrase did not exist, I don’t feel a need to press the point here. Even without that phrase, governments, federal and state, can exercise controls over the ownership of guns. Perhaps, I can best illustrate my point by calling on us all to exercise our imaginations.

Suppose that instead of playing around with electricity, Ben Franklin had invented a very primitive automobile, say one that could go 5 miles an hour. Everyone in the 18th century knew the importance of transportation: for defense purposes; for economic reasons, for matters of government.

So, the constitution is amended to include a phrase guaranteeing people the right to own and drive cars. Does anyone seriously believe that the right to drive 5 miles an hour (the equivalent of the musket) would be translated into a right to own cars going 200 miles an hour (i.e. the machine gun, the bazooka, etc.) without any government supervision, without licenses and registration of vehicles? or that it would be left to parents to decide when their 12-year-olds were mature enough to hit the road?

Jerome Nadelhaft of Bangor is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Maine.