Robert Corbin Quotes
What if they had to wait seven days to get their rifles to come to the Alamo and fight?
Robert Corbin, Attorney General, Arizona, Speech, National Rifle Association, April 12, 1991
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This quotation is one of the few times where history helped to implement policy. President Johnson & Singletary, a historian and ex University of Texas Chancellor, has decided that Camp Gary at San Marcos would serve as the first Job Corps urban center; enrollees from 6 different states were to be sent. The youth would be living in integrated quarters in proximity to San Marcos, whose citizens were concerned for the safety of their area and the virtue of their daughters. But most of the opposition was racial. One group to go was 100 youth from Memphis. Connolly’s staff had recommended that he veto the Tennesseans, and he sent a communication to Singletary asking him to withdraw the Memphis contingent as prevention to his veto. The phone was silent for a minute after Singletary’s statement. Then the governor replied, “We Texans are a lot of things but we are not ungrateful. OK we’ll take the Tennesseans, Otis, but make sure that they are nice boys and not too uppity.” History had won.
While the militia had very few arms, Van Rensselaer had no military training and commanded a critical army because of his political connections—common at the time. After he botched the Battle of Queenston Heights he returned to politics but his military failure dogged him for the rest of his career. The quotation is yet another that illustrated the myth of all Americans armed and ready to fight for the nation. There was no gun culture then, and guns were expensive and a minority of Americans owned them. In this case less than 20 percent of the American militia owned a gun. And Congress would just not at the time spend the money for weapons.
The Factory had been established by the State of Virginia in 1775 to make guns. America filled with armed Americans in the Colonial era was a myth. Early America was not a gun culture. Guns were expensive, needed maintenance, took too long to reload, and were not as effective for most purposes as other weapons like hatchets and knives. American Colonial war was mostly hand to hand combat with relatively little shooting. Less than one fourth of the men joining Washington’s army owned guns. Gun factories could not survive for want of customers and gunsmiths went into other occupations. See {613052}. With the rebellion, it was critical to manufacture guns to arm the soldiers who had not their own. But the efforts like this were relatively feeble. The factory director who made not a single gun in over a year was then promoted to Commissary General of Munitions in the Continental Army. He was married to George Washington’s sister. He did however finance much of the munitions he procured with his own personal funds so made up in wealth and patriotism what he lacked in manufacturing skill.
Washington was very unhappy with militia even from his native Virginia. See also {613030} This quotation is very important because the common belief is that all Americans in Colonial America were skilled with a gun and that there was a strong gun ownership culture. Many people quote {613057}. However, that was not the case as this and other research has shown. Less than one quarter of the Virginia militia had any weapon. Guns were expensive and only a minority of Americans could afford them. Despite the image of sharpshooters, and there were some, most guns were very inaccurate in the hands of most men.
This is yet another quotation demonstrating that the image of early America as a gun culture where most men were armed, skilled with those arms, and ready to come to the defense of the country. It turns out that none of the three corresponded to any historical reality for most Americans.
Robert Herman Orlando Corbin is a Guyanese politician who was the leader of the opposition People's National Congress (PNC) between 2003 and 2012.
