The Next Amendment: The Responsibility To Bear Arms
How a history buff went from buying and firing a musket to proposing the next amendment to the US Constitution.
Shooting Willie
I can recall the first time I shot a man like it was yesterday. I remember scoping out my target, a hundred yards away. I posted the barrel of my gun against a dirt hill that both hid my presence and gave me a steady shot. I took aim, held my breath, rehearsing the action over and over. Then, in a moment of calm deliberation I pulled the trigger.
I will confess to the satisfaction that I got when I saw that I hit him, a confession I still wrestle with to this day. To be fair, if I really did hit him—he may have just reached down to scratch his leg at the exact instant I was aiming my BB gun at him—at more than a football field away, my little copper BB would have done exactly zero damage. More than four decades have elapsed since then and I now see that the small thrill I felt when he bent down to scratch his leg was probably an invention in my little, bent-on-vengeance mind. Willie had bullied me, to use a word not common then but all too familiar today. And he got what he deserved: A BB gun pointed at his calf from a hundred yards out.
Forgive me for being cheeky. For those of you who are horrified at the thought of a ten-year old pointing any gun at another human being, you may be overreacting. For those of you laughing about this incident and think it’s nothing, you may be underreacting. Over the more than forty years since the day I shot Willie, I’ve done both, vacillating between horror and humor.
If pointing and shooting a gun at Willie in a foundational stage of my life causes me mixed emotions, it’s an apt metaphor for our country, its history, and our current predicament. Because we are a nation founded on gun use, no matter how we choose to see that fact today.
The Shot Heard Round The World
At a fifteen-minute drive from my home in Massachusetts there lies an unusual National Park. It follows an elongated stretch of road covering the distance from Fiske Hill in the town of Lexington on into nearly the center of Concord. The Minute Man National Historical Park commemorates the start of the Revolutionary War. Unlike Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, this park highlights not natural beauty but a combination of social beauty and tragedy. Here, men died. Here, men's remains still lie. For here was the place where the "shot heard 'round the world" was fired, the initial shot made by Colonial militiamen at British regular soldiers lined up in formation. Under orders.
With shots fired by everyday men of colonial Massachusetts, using their own guns, more than a war was started: after more than 3,000 days of hostilities, a nation was born. So important were those guns to the success of that new nation emerging from the clouds of smoke, that fourteen years later, the framers of the US Constitution would encode the right to bear arms into founding law, a decision we are still laboring under.
The date these shots were fired was April 19, 1775 and the occasion was militia resistance to a British incursion into the countryside to seize weapons—gunpowder, cannon, muskets—and to prevent the local militia from resisting the occupation of Boston by British Regulars.
King George meant to assert legal and financial control over the colonies of America and he and his military advisers knew one truth: You cannot subdue these people as long as they have munitions to defend themselves. So Governor and General Thomas Gage had spent the end of 1774 and into 1775 seizing as many cannon as he could, including powder, which was not much given that colonial spies were usually able to warn villages outside of Boston of troop seizure marches in enough time to hide the arms.
Meanwhile, the colonists, or provincials, as they were known back in mother England also knew they needed cannon and powder so not only did they hide their munitions but they also managed to steal cannon from Boston itself from under the noses of British occupying forces. The cannon were important, true, but the most powerful tools of war used on that crucial April day in 1775 were small arms, muskets, and some number of the relatively new innovation of the rifled barrel muskets, or what we call rifles today.
In fact, as General Thomas Gage sent his more than 700 men marching from Boston to Lexington and into Concord, in search of cannon, all of those men, minus the roughly 70 who would perish along Battle Road, had to flee for their lives along the fourteen-mile road back to Boston. It was militia muskets that won the day. Not their cannon.
Why Me
I am an aficionado of history, Boston history especially, and my purpose in this essay is to offer historical context for our challenges today and to propose a radically naïve but, I believe, effective next step. I’m going to talk about guns, American guns, and in the process I’m going to make some, perhaps most, of you angry. Before I do that, I’ll explain what I am not, upfront, so you don't have to guess at my intentions. I am not a gun-control advocate. I have no ties to, nor sympathies with, nor do I donate to any organization advocating gun control policy.
What I also am not. A gun owner, or at least the kind of gun owner you think of when you hear that phrase. The only firearm I own is a replica 1762 Brown Bess musket, the kind that were used here in 1775. For the record, I have never been a member of the NRA or affiliated with a like-minded organization though as a result of the research I conducted to produce this essay and the related videos, I have joined a private gun club solely for access to a shooting range, which I will explain later.
Let me repeat, conclusively: I have never donated to a political organization or cause with the aim of either controlling or preserving gun rights. I am acting alone here with no one backing me. On the other hand, I am not completely alone. Because I live in and trust in that middle ground, where most Americans are, who are willing to admit that the most tragic gun deaths are potentially preventable, possibly through effective restrictions on some types of guns to some people at some times. But who also believe that outlawing guns is not only impractical and even impossible to do, but perhaps not as morally superior a wish as some claim.
Senseless Death Among Us
As I do a final edit on this essay in late November our nation is mourning several mass shootings. The three most prominent include one at a Walmart in Virginia where six people were killed by a coworker who legally bought a 9mm handgun that same day; one at a gay bar in Colorado Springs where five people were killed by an individual whose motives are not yet clear and whose rifle was legally purchased though it could have been seized by enforcement of so-called red flag laws and wasn’t; and one in Charlottesville, Virginia at the University of Virginia campus where a student waited in ambush and killed three fellow students with a previously stolen handgun he had bought illegally.
That’s just today. I first started this essay earlier in the year when we were mourning another prominent tragedy where a shooter killed ten people at a Buffalo-area grocery store using a legally purchased then illegally modified rifle. The day after the Buffalo shooting, even before the final toll had been counted, I joined a prayer gathering held by the mayor of the city of Newton, Massachusetts where local leaders of many faiths spoke and addressed the sense of rage we felt and hope we yearned for.
The mayor called for "sensible gun control regulations," to make our communities safe. And I agreed with her in the moment, even as I knew that the argument would get tied up in knots over conflicting definitions of "sensible." In the weeks that followed we heard on replay familiar arguments over gun rights and gun control. Comparisons to other countries are made often, comparing rates of gun violence here with rates in other developed countries.
These comments and arguments are rebutted by people pointing to the Constitution, specifically the Second Amendment which States that, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." For some Americans this settles it—we can bear arms without restriction. The argument swings the other way, however, with gun control advocates correctly pointing out that the framers of the Constitution couldn’t have envisioned the kinds of weapons we have available today else they might have provided more room for restriction.
Sadly, as I was fleshing out the paragraph you just read in the weeks after the Buffalo shooting, a young man killed nineteen children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. I put a pause on this essay then and merely watched, letting the horror wash over me. Then I braced myself for the same arguments we had just heard for eleven days in the aftermath of Buffalo.
Exactly a month later, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the closely watched New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen case. The decision was stunning in its reversal of decades of prior restrictions states were allowed to place on gun ownership. Abolishing a prior system for determining the constitutionality of gun and ammo restrictions permitted to individual states, the court specified that constitutionality had to be based on whether a law violates the plain text of the Second Amendment. And if it does, that “the government must affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition.” This test for constitutionality is known among legal scholars as the Text, History, and Tradition or TMT method.
Frankly, if I were a gun control advocate, this Supreme Court decision would have incensed me. It immediately decimated long-standing legal frameworks in many states, including in my home state of Massachusetts, essentially removing most state-level restrictions on gun ownership that previously made it difficult for some individuals to obtain weapons.
It was into this tempest that I was blithely strolling, following a path I had sketched out before any of these things happened—before Buffalo, Uvalde, and Bruen. I was merely a history buff, a guy who spent much of the first half of the year producing a series of historical videos summarizing the events surrounding Patriots Day, the name Massachusetts gives April 19th, 1775, where the Revolutionary War officially began. I told the moving and sometimes difficult stories of men, many of whom sacrificed their lives on that fateful day. Knowing that 2025 will mark the 250th anniversary of their sacrifice, I resolved to prepare myself to participate in historical reenactments at Minute Man National Historical Park. To do so, I would have to acquire a period-appropriate musket and learn how to fire it. And to do that I believed I would need to apply for a Massachusetts License to Carry (LTC), a firearms license that would also allow me to buy pistols and rifles of the sort used in the heinous murders I have already described.
My period musket, a Pedersoli replica “Brown Bess,” arrived in June. At the same time I began the process of signing up for the classes Massachusetts requires I take before receiving my LTC. I had to solicit letters of reference from friends who could vouch for my character, and I had to fill out a form that asked me to explain why I felt I needed an LTC. All along the way I found myself walking further down this path and asking myself what role I was playing in the events plaguing our society. I recorded videos along the way showing me finishing the musket stock, buying black powder, and making paper cartridges to fire. And finally, just this week, I test-fired the musket on the range of a local gun club I had to join in order to fire my weapon safely in the Boston suburbs.
The entire experience has been surreal. Each time a shooting occurs, I reflect on the people I met in the class I took where we learned to handle a pistol safely, the people who sell the firearms and ammunition I’ve bought, the people I’ve met at the gun club, and friends I’ve asked for advice along the way. Everybody I meet I have full confidence in; each one I interact with leaves me reassured about the state of gun ownership in America. Yet I know this can’t be true of all gun owners. I’m left not knowing whether to see in us as Americans the horror of a ten-year old boy pointing a BB gun at his nemesis or the harmlessness of the same impotent act. Or both.
The Constitution Came From Somewhere
Wouldn’t it be great if the Constitution had never included this seemingly minor right? Some think so. Others think this ability to arm ourselves is the thing that keeps us from the edge of anarchy, a belief which increased after the 2020 summer of “mostly peaceful” protests if my conversations with some fellow gun class participants are any indication. Amateur follower of history that I am, the discussion is begging for some context. True, the Constitution encodes a right to bear arms. Debate what that should mean today all you want. But why does the Constitution include this provision?
Given the new focus on text, history, and tradition specified by the Supreme Court as the test for constitutionality, I resolved to care about understanding that tradition, accounting for how people used guns in the 1770s. The framers of the Constitution themselves kept and bore arms independent of their militia ties, including muskets, shotguns, rifles, and pistols. Thomas Jefferson, a principal contributor to the document, owned several firearms, including two prized, 20-inch barreled Turkish pistols. Less personal and more to the purpose intended by the Constitution, among the state declarations and constitutions penned before the Constitution, often by the same individuals who framed the Constitution, there are multiple proofs that for them, “the people have the right to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state,” as, for example, the Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights of 1776 expressly said. If this is the tradition we are bound to, why did it arise in the first place?
Let’s go back to that April day in Concord Massachusetts. Earlier that day, before they got to Concord, the British Regulars had marched through Lexington where the local militia, a force of maybe 70-80 men, stood at parade rest on the green at Lexington Common. Commanded by Captain John Parker, the small band was severely outnumbered and according to Parker, was intended to do nothing more than show courage in the face of the advancing British troops. But a series of missteps compounded by the reactions of a few tired and jittery soldiers resulted in a shot that came from where? No one knows to this day.
Nonetheless, the shot was answered by British regulars firing their loaded muskets and charging forward with bayonets. Eight men, all of them militiamen and residents of Lexington died on or near the common that day. The British columns, meanwhile, continued the rest of the fourteen-mile march to Concord to seize cannon stashed in farmhouses. Instead of cannon, however, there they would find lead shot loaded in iron barrels pointed directly at them.
Though subject to the crown, American colonists had grown up in a state of benign neglect, left largely alone to manage their affairs. The Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay and the colony it eventually became were stern people. They believed God held his creations in contempt, revolted by their sinful state. That, while they prayed for his favor, they also expected their hard work and industry to provide for most of their needs.
A saying common to these Puritans and their children was, "Let your amusements be lawful, brief, and [infrequent]." These people toiled every day, carving a relatively prosperous life out of a harsh wilderness, at first by partnering with the local native peoples and then when that ceased to work, by eliminating many of them, killing some, converting others, and carting off many as slaves to be sold to sugar plantations in the Caribbean. And though I’m referring largely to Massachusetts when I characterize the colonists this way, settlers were not dramatically different elsewhere in what became the thirteen colonies. One result of the hard and difficult living was a peculiar feature of American colonies that has never gone away: gun ownership.
American Gun Rights Co-evolved With Other Rights
By the 1720s, Colonists in the British Americas had become dependent on weapons to hunt game; to defend against or attack indigenous people; and during the French and Indian war, to take up formal arms to defend against French power. That led the rate of gun ownership to be astonishingly high: two-thirds of Massachusetts Colonial men owned a gun (see Atkinson, below). This is far higher than the one-fifth of men in mother England who owned a firearm.
Not coincidentally, a similar proportion, roughly two-thirds of men, owned land (Atkinson). Back in England, under a fifth of men owned land. In the English voting system, only landowners could vote in local elections. Hence in England, roughly 1/6th of men, or 1/12th of the adult population could vote, since women wouldn't be extended the right to vote for more than 150 years later. In Massachusetts, two-thirds of men could vote in contrast, or one-third of the population. Note how these rights all went together. Land ownership, voting rights, and the need – not even the right but the need to bear arms. It was not just an option to have a gun, to do your duty as a man in the colonial era, you had to own a firearm and know how to use it. Else how could you answer the call to serve your town or village when needed? Or defend your home from harm? Not to mention hunt for game. It should not surprise us then that all of these things would be enshrined in law. The Second Amendment gives people the right to bear arms. The Constitution gives men the right to vote—regardless of property ownership though this was contentious at the time—and this right was later expanded to include black men and finally women in the Fifteenth (1870) and Nineteenth (1920) Amendments respectively.
And what of the right of property? The Fifth Amendment expressly prohibits the government from depriving people of their property without due process of law, which property includes everything from land to homes and effects. For me, the most surprising revelation on this front came when I was in high school history class four decades ago and learned that the original Declaration of Independence from 1776, as drafted by Thomas Jefferson and debated by the framers, was, “that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with unalienable rights. that among these are life, liberty, and property." This shouldn’t be a revelation at all, at least to those who had read John Locke who more than a century before included exactly this phrase in his writings. Jefferson was persuaded to change this phrase not because it was wrong but because Locke himself also used the broader phrase “pursuit of happiness” to include not only physical property but personal opportunity – in a strong defense of individual moral agency.
Back in Concord as the main body of British troops secured the town center, smaller detachments were sent to ride out to farms suspected of hiding sequestered munitions. Several were sent out to the Old North Bridge so they could hold this position while further companies marched from there to specific homes, including Major John Buttrick’s farmhouse on the hill above the bridge. Amassed on the east side of the bridge roughly 100 British troops waited for word on what to do next. Meanwhile, heeding the call sent out throughout the night before, colonial men marched and rode from nearby towns. By nine o' clock that morning at least 400 men from the surrounding area had gathered there, on the west or opposing side of the bridge from where the body of British soldiers was staged. One company of men from the neighboring town of Acton was lined up at the front.
It was in this moment that smoke became visible to the south, from the center of town. There, unbeknownst to the men at the bridge, British regulars had found some old wooden cannon carts and, deciding to hamper any efforts of the locals to preserve military capacity, they burned the carts. The smoke that rose from the town, to the eyes of suspicious militiamen standing at the bridge, looked like the British had decided to burn down the town. Just imagine it. The British had marched fourteen miles out of Boston, all night long. They had already killed eight men at dawn that morning, and all intent on seizing munitions. Property. And unable to find any, they appeared to be burning the town!
If ever there was a time that life, liberty, and property were under threat and worthy of defense, this would be that time, and least in the minds of the citizens of Concord and the surrounding towns. And how would they respond? With their guns, each weapon owned by a property owner, with voting rights, in service of and together with members of their community.
A Vote For Life, Liberty, and Property
What followed is an unusually well-documented event, among the otherwise confusing events leading up to and in the Revolutionary War. The militia men lined up to march to the west side of the bridge, while the British regulars lined up in a firing formation on the opposite side. The sight of 400 colonials forming ranks on the opposite side caused some of the Regulars to later reflect that the men looked so disciplined as to resemble the British troops themselves, considered the most prepared army in the world.
The first shots were fired, probably by the British but not under orders, as warning shots. Maybe in the air, or into the water. But as often happens, once a few soldiers open fire, men in the same company lose their bearings—musket fire is deafeningly loud, after all—and soon can’t tell if orders have been given or whether they are under attack. The irregular warning shots turned into a volley and within seconds, two colonial soldiers, one of them Captain Isaac Davis of the Acton minutemen company, were dead.
Major John Buttrick, seeing two of his men dead and still reeling from the idea that the British soldiers were burning his town down, issued this unforgettable command: “Fire, fellow soldiers, for God’s sake, fire!”
The return volley from the Colonials—Americans, we can start to think of them—left two British Regulars dead instantly and set the entire British side in disarray, causing them to hastily retreat to Concord center. As soon as it was begun, the skirmish was over. Four men dead instantly, others injured. More important than the casualty count, however, was the fact that for the first time ever, someone on the colonial side ordered militiamen to fire on British Regulars. In all of the accidents that preceded this event, including at Lexington that morning, never had a commanding officer on either side ordered direct fire on the other.
That’s the shot heard round the world and it was fired by the Colonials. A “vote” if you will, by locals, to protect their arms and their property. Not to mention their life and liberty, the very things that a year later the Declaration of Independence would formally list as unalienable rights.
The rest of that April 19th was a continued vote of sorts, first by hundreds then by thousands of colonial militiamen who arrived from all parts ready to defend their rights. All of them carrying their own muskets, rifles, and pistols. It was with those weapons that the day was won. And not just thanks to the men who fired them. For their powder that day and often throughout the rest of the war would be wrapped in paper packets called cartridges by the women and children of their villages: Even many of their bullets or balls were made by helping hands that melted down lead and poured it into molds.
More American Guns For Fewer American Gun Owners
Let’s consider what this means today. Today, approximately a third of US households have a gun. As large as that seems to some of us, it’s a significant drop compared with the two thirds of households that owned firearms in the thirteen original colonies. But that third is still higher than most other countries in the world. And only two other countries—Mexico and Guatemala, both of them, interestingly enough, countries that liberated themselves by force from rule by a European superpower—have constitutional protections for gun ownership.
Rates of gun ownership are typically expressed as number of guns per person in a country—or usually guns per 100 people because everywhere else in the world, this number is some number smaller than 100, much smaller usually. Like 28 per 100 people in Switzerland, which requires all its men to learn how to handle firearms in mandatory military service. In the US, the number exceeds 100, meaning there are 120 firearms for every 100 people, or 1.2 firearms per person, or nearly 400 million guns total. That’s more than 3 guns per gun owner in the country, which sounds like a lot but is small compared to what we saw last Christmas from some pro-gun Instagram accounts. I have many personal friends and extended family members who own six, eight, or even a dozen.
For some people, seeing this excessive number only demonstrates how terrible guns are—and how bad the people who own guns are—without then doing the math on how many guns there are and how few of them are ever pointed at a human being much less fired at one. It’s all just excess: Why would anyone “need” so many guns? Why would anybody need more than 2 or 3 pairs of shoes? Or why does Jay Leno need so many cars? Obviously, with human identity patterns, “need” doesn’t really have anything to do with it. Like any other worthwhile act in the pursuit of happiness, owning, caring for, and properly handling these firearms is a way these individuals choose to experience life, and do so expressly identifying this as an aspect of American heritage. For years I have privately referred to this as the “rite” to bear arms. Not just that you can, but a rite or ritual that you enact as part of your community identity and sense of self. Is it any wonder that people who participate in this essential rite would want to do so more than once?
They often see this rite as a patriotic one, understanding citizenship in a way that goes back to 1775: They have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that is best expressed by continuing the uniquely American traditions of owning property, voting in elections, and properly bearing firearms. It’s not enough to believe in those things. You have to act them out in your personal life. Hence, the “rite” to bear arms in a way that makes it a responsibility to do so.
I Propose We Accept Our Responsibility
How are we doing on these uniquely American rights? In the 2020 presidential election 68% of Americans voted, one of the highest election participation rates ever. Similarly, 66% of American homes or apartments were owned by the people who lived in them. Despite common expressions of despair over how little Americans follow politics, despite the stories about how impossible it is to buy a home, two-thirds of Americans do both things. Those two things go together, just like they did in 1775. But as I’ve already shared, the rate at which households own a gun has been cut in half since our country was founded. The commitment to guns—the specific type of property that was assumed by our framers to be necessary to the protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—has fallen way behind.
This growing rift between gun owners and non-gun owners sheds light on what’s happening in our country today. Compared with nearly 250 years ago, half as many Americans on a percentage basis see the right to bear arms entwined with other essential privileges like voting and home ownership. And that half is so disconnected from the people they left behind—people who see owning and firing guns as a quintessentially American act—that they cannot see each other clearly.
“You want to kill people!” says one group, not understanding the depth of connection their opponents have with the rite and responsibility to bear arms. “You are unAmerican!” counters the other group, not understanding that people can still value other rights and privileges written into the US Constitution without supporting this specific one.
If asked, adherents on both sides would insist that they are the true keepers of the rights of life and liberty. After all, banning guns would preserve life and extend liberty to be free of threat of harm. But allowing responsible gun uses also preserves life, especially the lives of close family, or so most gun owners believe, while also preserving the liberty of the individual bearer of arms. Ensconced in their view of life and liberty, each side perceives the other to be a fundamental threat.
The Next Amendment To the Constitution
I may not have a plan. But I do have a proposal. The kind of proposal that is disconnected from the priorities of the activists on either side. My proposal is annoyingly simple: Amend the Constitution to expressly state that bearing arms is a right that can be freely exercised by any adult in the country who is willing to live up to the responsibility to bear arms. Properly executed, this would preserve both life and liberty in ways that both sides value.
I know how hard it is to amend the Constitution. But the current configuration of the Constitution, unamended, will leave us facing more of what we already mourn today. And an amendment to overturn the Second Amendment just isn’t possible. Not politically, not socially, and not militarily, heaven forbid. Most people don’t evenwant to ban or allow all weapons. The sane course it to amend the Constitution with text that expressly admits the right to bear arms while giving legislatures and courts the right to impose reasonable responsibilities on those who wish to exercise the right. Those same courts and legislatures will debate bitterly over what form those responsibilities should take. But that debate can happen in an environment where gains any side makes are safe from the Supreme Court—liberal or conservative—pulling the rug out from under the other side after years of effort to make improvements likely to responsibly secure freedoms or preserve innocent life.
There are no organizations – media organizations, political parties, political action committees, lobbyist firms – who will benefit from the kind of sane approach to firearms embodied in my proposal. Scaring people increases the likelihood that they’ll donate, watch, or share. Gratefully, the one thing this issue has going for it is that literally no one on either side wants gun deaths to occur. Even if they disagree on the role gun ownership plays in reducing that number.
What do you say, America? Can we accept the right to bear arms if it comes with the burden of responsibility in how we bear those arms? My answer is yes.
Full Video Series: American Arms
American Arms 1: Unboxing My Replica Musket
American Arms 2: Finishing My Replica Musket
American Arms 3: Buying Black Powder
American Arms 4: Making Black Powder Cartridges
American Arms 5: Firing My Musket For The First Time
American Arms 6: The Responsibility To Bear Arms
Resources
Supreme Court Bruen decision commentary
Details and commentary on the Bruen decision on SCOTUSblog, a source that cites competing takes on Supreme Court decisions. Here, for example, if you read the first two articles referenced, they are very opposite in their take on Bruen: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen
Discussion of the impact of the Bruen decision on current state law: Supreme Court's Gun Rights Decision Upends State Restrictions | The Pew Charitable Trusts
Background on the Text, History, and Tradition (THT) basis for determining constitutionality of firearms regulations: Text, History, and Tradition: A Workable Test that Stays True to the Constitution | Duke Center for Firearms Law
Books for Revolutionary War history
I can’t recommend Nathaniel Philbrick’s Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution highly enough. It ends with Bunker Hill but covers the decade before it thoroughly. I’ve read a lot of history books in my life, Philbrick’s ability to describe what appears to have happened, who the people involved are, and what motivated them, seems so effortless that you forget how hard it is to do until you read other historical books.
To expand the account from the British Perspective, read Rick Atkinson’s The British Are Coming. Atkinson was privileged to have access to many British records previously unavailable to historians, giving his writing a perspective on the British that is regularly omitted from most—but especially American—writers’ accounts.
A lesser-known book, The Road to Concord, is a gem, written by J.L. Bell, a local writer whose blog Boston 1775 is an indispensable resource when studying the events of revolutionary Massachusetts. In particular, I like that Bell hunts down the origins of stories that have been retold so many times their truthfulness is by now assumed. He does so with respect and respectable honesty.
Not a book, but the Concord Museum opened its revamped exhibit on the events of April 19, 1775 in 2021. This is reason enough to come to Boston just to see this exhibit. Follow the detailed timeline of the events of that day in this remarkable and informative interactive exhibit.
James, it's a pleasure to follow your journey and I commend you on your process, your research, and your courage in pursuing it. My comment here is more a question about your proposal. You suggest that we should "Amend the Constitution to expressly state that bearing arms is a right that can be freely exercised by any adult in the country who is willing to live up to the responsibility to bear arms." Perhaps unsurprisingly to you, I'm confused by your proposal because to me (a long-time gun owner and 2A proponent) the 2A already covers that. What am I missing? From my perspective, half the states in this country already violate the 2A language, specifically the "shall not be infringed" part. Case in point is our home state of MA, which as you've just experienced, makes it quite difficult to exercise one's 2A right.
Keep up the great work! I look forward to seeing more it.