Saul Cornell Quotes
As long as there have been guns in America there have been regulations governing their use and storage. Without government direction there would have been no body of Minutemen to muster on the town greens at Lexington and Concord. If the Founders had imbibed the strong gun rights ideology that drives today's gun debate we would all be drinking tea and singing, "God save our gracious Queen.
Saul Cornell, Historian, Reconstructing the 2nd Amendment
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was written over a decade before the Second Amendment became a part of the U. S. Constitution.
Gunsmiths were few in early America and a skilled gunsmith could only make about 3 per month. As a result guns in early America were a luxury and few Americans orned them. This is contrary to the myth that the early Americans were all gun owners and sharpshooters.
While it is probably true that communities with high gun ownership rates do prevent some gun deaths by intimadating some criminals or neutralzing them, but the ready and common availability of guns in such communities also enable many criminals. In addition the high gen density makes gun death in spontaneous anger and conflict situations more likely adn the accident and suicide rates go way up the more guns are accessible.
Saul Cornell, is the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History at Fordham University, a former Professor of history at Ohio State University and the former Director of the Second Amendment Research Center at the John Glenn Institute.
