The Myth of the Colonial Rifleman
One of the most enduring memes of the right-wing pro-gun culture is that of the colonial rifleman. They paint a romantic historical picture of groups of colonists, faces streaked with dirt, muzzle-loading muskets carefully kept and loaded, engineering the downfall of the mighty British Empire in America. They want you to believe that the Second Revolutionary War, like the first, could be won by rugged individualists and their small arms (and legally owned automatic weapons). They claim that the Founding Fathers wanted unrestricted individual access to small arms because they believed that a determined resistance could overcome a government that had turned against its people.
Except it’s all bullshit.
Like so many right-wing narratives, it’s based on a deliberate misunderstanding of the history involved. Contrary to the right-wing ahistorical narrative, the Revolutionary War was not simply “colonists” versus “British infantry”. Let’s break down the other factors involved:
1) Continental Regulars. The United States Army was founded on 14 June 1775, and consisted of trained soldiers who had fought in the French and Indian War and had been trained by the Royal Army for such action. When colonial militias fought against Redcoats directly, it largely ended in disaster for the colonials; while this was later exploited to the Americans’ advantage, the bulk of the fighting on the field was done by trained professional infantry.
2) Artillery. The colonials had few field guns of their own, and certainly no way to make them. What guns they had, they stole from the British, or the French brought them in when they got involved (but more on that later). Already we see a power disparity between the British governmental forces and the revolutionaries, and that leads us to…
3) The Royal Navy. The common response to this right-wing trope is to argue that the government has tanks and planes, and modern revolutionaries would be hopelessly outclassed. It’s not just modern revolutionaries; the colonists had nothing that could hope to match the might of the Royal Navy. Their ships didn’t just have firepower; it lent the Royal Army unparalleled mobility, letting them appear anywhere they were needed, much faster than the Continental Army could march. The Americans had nothing to match this, until…
4) The French. The gun activists carefully control the narrative to avoid mention of the French, but the war would never have been won unless they had gotten involved. They provided men, training, materiel, and their navy to complicate British strategy and force an advantageous position. The key to any revolution against a tyrannical government isn’t the citizens’ force of arms, but whether they can get other countries to acknowledge their cause and lend support. It was true then, and it’s true now.