Jeanne Marie Laskas Quotes
Working in a gun store is hard on your feet and your back.
Laskas, Jeanne Marie. Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make This Country Work. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2012.
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.
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.
At the time, English ordinary citizens were not allowed to have firearms, but exception was made for the colonists. “Stands” were y-shaped sticks that the gun would rest on as the weight was about 20 pounds.
Even allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration, it is clear that there were many Americans who were personally armed in this period.
