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It was gun control. That’s what kicked off the fighting at Lexington and Concord - and started the War for Independence.... View MoreIt was gun control. That’s what kicked off the fighting at Lexington and Concord - and started the War for Independence. But they never teach that in government-run schools. It’s almost as if they want you to believe the Founders fought a long, bloody war just to get representatives to tax them. That’s a lie. The truth? Months before the battles of Lexington and Concord, the British launched a systematic campaign to disarm the people - confiscating powder, banning imports, carrying out warrantless searches and seizures, and more. On April 19, 1775, the revolutionaries finally fought back. A LONG TRAIN OF ABUSES To understand what led to the first shots of the war, we have to back up just a little. After the Seven Years’ War ended in 1763, the British Empire was buried in debt. So they did two things that changed everything: they stationed a permanent standing army in the colonies - and they expected the Americans to pay for it. They tried to raise that revenue with a series of internal taxes - including some of the most notorious still remembered today: The Stamp Act of 1765 The Townshend Acts of 1767 The Tea Act of 1773 Each time, the people resisted - with petitions, protests, and non-compliance. And sometimes, it escalated. In 1770, five colonists were shot and killed by British troops in what came to be known as the Boston Massacre. Then, in December 1773, it all boiled over with the Boston Tea Party. DISARMAMENT BY DESIGN The British response was swift and brutal, aiming to suppress any colonial defiance. In the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament passed what became known as the Coercive Acts. Among other things, they closed the port of Boston and revoked the Massachusetts charter - bringing the colony under the total control of the British government. The move only escalated tensions. To many colonists, it was yet another attempt to strip them of their right to self-rule and force them into submission. At the center of this strategy was military control - and that meant taking the people's arms. General Thomas Gage was appointed to replace Thomas Hutchinson as military governor of Massachusetts earlier in 1774. He arrived in Boston and formally took office on May 13. As Dave Kopel writes, Gage believed the best way to keep the peace was to disarm the colonists. He set in motion a secret plan to remove military supplies - especially guns and gunpowder - from public storehouses across New England. That plan was already in motion by late summer 1774. Most of the weapons and powder in those magazines belonged to provincial governments. But some were owned by individual towns, merchants, or private citizens. The goal wasn’t just to neutralize government forces - it was to disarm the people.

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