Colonial Sensitive Locations  by Tom Reynolds

According to SCOTUS’ Bruen decision, when enacting gun control laws, the government bears the burden to show that those laws are supported by a longstanding historical tradition that goes back to the founding of our nation.   Specifically: “the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”  The 2nd Amendment is an “unqualified command” and exceptions to it must be historical exceptions.

Since it is 83 pages long and single spaced, I’ll have to rely on Stephen Halbrook’s review of The Second Amendment, Sensitive Places, and Comprehensive Government Security , a study by Dr. Angus McClellan.  The basic theme of this study is that there is a historical tradition of sensitive places but these places were not gun free zones.  Instead, when the government required its citizens to disarm to enter a sensitive place, the government provided the protection with armed security.  The government must provide security when it labels a place as ‘sensitive;” that is the historical tradition surrounding ‘sensitive places,’ not the left’s belief that sensitive places just need to be “gun free zones.”

McClellan points out that security was provided at sensitive places such as courthouses* and legislative assemblies** in each of the 13 original states (plus Vermont) and that at least 10 of the original states had security at polling places***.

When the government could not provide security for a ‘sensitive place’, colonial citizens were required to arm in order to protect themselves (unlike today when New York State makes ‘sensitive locations’ a gun free zone).  For instance, governments could not furnish security in colonial churches so citizens were expected to perform that function.  (In George Henry Boughton’ painting of Early Puritans of New England Going to Church, the men are all armed.)  In 1770, Georgia required that every person liable to bear arms in the militia “shall carry with him a gun, or a pair of pistols, in good order and fit for service, with at least six charges of gun-powder and ball, and shall take the said gun or pistols with him to the pew or seat...The penalty of ten schillings for neglect of same…”****  Other colonies had similar laws .

Arms were also required to be taken to public assemblies and carried while traveling. 

Modern schools are ‘gun free zones’ and every school shooting in the last 30 years has been in those ‘gun free zones.’ 

Schools were not gun free zones at the Founding.  Firearms restrictions applied only to students over whom the school exercised in loco parentis authority, and not to faculty. 

In short, there were sensitive locations at the time of the Founding. And when Founding-era governments did not have the resources to secure all such locations, the Founders had a solution to that problem and it wasn’t a ‘gun free zone’ sign; men were required to bring their firearms.  This is unlike the approach we see today in New York (and other deep blue states) where government-mandated ‘gun free zones’ render their citizens defenseless.   The founders believed in the opposite of the approach of blue states, today.

This lesson for the 21st century was clearly explained by Cesare Beccaria, an 18th century philosopher on crime.  He wrote that arms-control laws “worsen the condition of the attacked while improving that of the attackers; they do not reduce murders, but increase them, because there is greater confidence in attacking the unarmed than the armed.”  The Founding Fathers agreed with Beccaria that laws that disarmed citizens and left them unprotected by the government made citizens into helpless prey. 

‘Gun free zones’ must either be protected by the government or abolished.

McClellan’s work has already been used in an amicus brief.  We can hope that it spreads quickly to other lawsuits and results in related New York laws being declared unconstitutional.

It is often said that: ’Those that do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.’  The Founders knew that, Beccaria knew that and SCOTUS knows that, but the gun control addicts on the left ignore even the most straightforward lessons of history.

* the 1789 Act to Establish the Judicial Courts of the United States provided for the appointment of U.S. marshals to attend the federal courts. 

**sergeants-at-arms and doorkeepers were appointed to keep order in and regulate admission into the various legislatures.  In 1786 such officials attended both the house of delegates and the senate in Virginia. 

*** In Virginia in 1742, two undersheriffs “with drawn Swords across the Doors” were placed as guards to allow voters to pass in and out of a courthouse to vote. 

**** #144 - Colonial records of the State of Georgia / compiled ... v.19 pt.1 1911. - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library