April 19, 2025, marked the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, a fiery dawn of courage that shattered the myth of British invincibility and lit the fuse of American independence. As many, worldwide, likely know, the overall event was a defiant stand against the Crown’s audacious gun control schemes, but that stand, itself, was a clash of principles rooted in the eternal struggle for self-ownership and liberty, and between large-scale officialdom versus local political communities and a closer approximation to voluntary interaction.
The seeds of the fight can be found in the very movement of Pilgrims to the New World in 1620, as the Puritans -- who had fled the religious persecution of England, then lived in relatively free Holland for a decade -- got sponsors to finance their relocation to America. That, unto itself, is a lesson for collectivists, a timeless lesson about the importance of free markets and the power of those markets to create profit and reinvest that into new ventures.
And as more American colonies became established and tried to operate under distant British rule, the locals encountered an increasingly unworkable and oppressive environment. As Michael Boldin notes for the Tenth Amendment Center, in 1687, nearly 100 years prior to Paul Revere’s famous Midnight Ride, the residents of Ipswich, Massachusetts, presaged the armed defense of rights that was to begin April 19, 1775.
Related: Bondi, Trump DOJ Signal Shift On Gun Rights
Led by Reverend John Wise, many local Ipswich residents resisted a new tax imposed by Governor Edmund Andros, declaring their refusal to pay due to a lack of representation. This defiance led to their imprisonment and culminated in the 1689 Boston Revolt, when 1,500 local militiamen marched into Boston and overthrew Andros. The revolt, sparked by tax resistance, marked a significant precursor to the American Revolution, with Ipswich claiming on its town seal the title:
"Birthplace of American Independence 1687."
The Ipswich event underscored the colonists' growing need for self-governance and set a precedent for future revolutionary actions against British authority and the numerous, onerous tax and stamp edicts the Crown tried to impose, starting in the mid-18th Century.
And two more incisive articles, one from Michael Boldin at the Tenth Amendment Center and another from The New American’s Joe Wolverton II, lay bare the truth of the final straw.
The American Revolution began when the British came for the colonists’ guns, and the patriots said, “No.”
In 1774, General Thomas Gage, the Crown’s enforcer in Massachusetts, got wind of colonial munitions stockpiled in Concord – stockpiles that represented potential resistance to future British edicts that might follow the despised Stamp Act and Intolerable Acts. His orders? Seize and destroy the arms -- a calculated assault on the colonists’ God-given right to self-defense, a right they saw as inseparable from their sovereignty. Michael Boldin notes, Gage’s move was part of a broader British gun control program that included bans on firearm and gunpowder imports and warrantless searches to disarm the populace.
Sound familiar?
The colonists weren’t having it. Aware of their God-given Natural Rights, they understood that an armed citizenry is the bedrock of a free society.
The New American vividly recounts the scene: on April 19, 1775, 700 Redcoats marched toward Lexington Green, where 70 militiamen, ordinary farmers and fathers, stood their ground. Major John Pitcairn barked:
“Disperse, you rebels! Throw down your arms!”
The response? Silence, resolve, and a refusal to bow. A shot rang out—nobody knows from whom—and the British volleyed, killing eight Minutemen. But the colonists didn’t scatter. They fought back, and by the time the Redcoats reached Concord, hundreds more patriots had rallied.
Writes Wolverton:
“If Lexington was a tragedy, Concord was a turning point.
As British forces marched on toward their objective, a storm was brewing behind them. The countryside had awakened. The alarm had reached the farms, fields, and villages. Militiamen — Minutemen — were pouring toward Concord like streams feeding a mighty river.
At the North Bridge, colonial militia assembled under the command of Major John Buttrick. When the British fired first, Buttrick cried, “Fire, fellow soldiers, for God’s sake, fire!” The American volley that followed was not simply a response to a military provocation — it was a declaration, a defiant stand that would reverberate across the globe.
It was here that the British were first turned back. Here that the myth of Redcoat invincibility was shattered. Here that the cause of American independence found its first triumph.”
The British lost 273 men that day; the colonists, 95. The myth of Redcoat supremacy was left bleeding in Redcoat attire.
Michael Boldin underscores that, had the colonies lost, the British planned to strip them of all firearms and impose a permanent standing army—precisely the kind of tyranny we encounter to varying degrees in America today, and precisely the kind of tyranny the Second Amendment soon was crafted to prevent.
The patriots’ stand was fueled by a principle respected among Westerners since the Magna Carta: liberty, once surrendered, is rarely reclaimed without blood.
For years prior to the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” the colonials tried to work within the ever-more-oppressive British system, but with impunity and indignancy towards Natural Law, the central government increased its attacks, leading more Americans to see the only path ahead.
Paul Revere and William Dawes likely knew that their rides from Boston would spark a revolution. They knew the violence to come. But they rode none the less. In fact, they rode because the defense of liberty requires the willingness to engage in armed self-defense.
This wasn’t about muskets alone. It was about what those muskets represented: the individual’s unalienable right to protect his life, property, and autonomy. The British knew an armed populace was a threat to their centralized power, just as modern statists know it today.
Governments inevitably seek to disarm those they claim to “protect.” In fact, all political “protection” as they call it, is imposed on you, and makes you pay for it whether you want to or you do not. Such a mindset, at its root, dismisses Natural Rights, and from there, politicians and bureaucrats will add more insults, more “regulations” and diktats, purportedly for your own good.
The colonists saw through this ruse in 1775, and their defiance at Lexington and Concord proved it.
The echoes of Lexington and Concord still resonate. The Second Amendment isn’t a relic; it’s a firewall against tyranny, as relevant now as it was 250 years ago. The New American reminds us that the patriots didn’t fight for privilege but for a principle: the right to live free. The Battles of Lexington and Concord weren’t about taxes or tea parties; they were about individuals refusing to be disarmed. The shot heard ‘round the world wasn’t just a musket blast—it was a declaration that liberty is non-negotiable. In the spirit of Patrick Henry, let’s stand today and say: Give us liberty, or give us death.
And, as a reminder of the courage of those people, let’s recall the some lines of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1863 poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride”.
First, the famous opening:
“Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.”
And, perhaps a message to us all, today, the final lines:
“So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.”
Now, we and our progeny write the next lines, and hopefully, we will honor those who sacrificed so much, so long ago.
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