Today marks the Semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence — two hundred fifty years since a group of colonists told the most powerful empire on earth that its rule was over. On the eve of that anniversary, President Donald Trump delivered remarks affirming the Second Amendment as a right given by God that “shall not be infringed.” The words landed on ground already consecrated by history. I have argued for years that this country’s founding did not begin with an abstract grievance over taxes or representation. It began, in the most literal sense, with an attempt by government to disarm the population it governed — and with a population that refused to comply.
A Revolution That Began With an Attempt to Take the Guns
On April 19, 1775, British regulars marched out of Boston toward Lexington and Concord under written orders from General Thomas Gage, the Crown’s military governor of Massachusetts. Gage’s instructions to Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, who commanded the column, directed the troops “to seize and destroy all Artillery, Ammunition, Provisions, Tents, Small Arms, and all Military Stores whatever” believed to be stockpiled at Concord. The soldiers carried orders to spike cannon, knock the trunnions off guns, and dump powder and flour into the river and mill pond. They were not marching to burn homes or terrorize a countryside. They were marching to confiscate weapons.
That mission had a precedent. Seven and a half months earlier, in September 1774, Gage had already sent roughly 260 regulars to seize the largest gunpowder magazine in the colony, near Boston. That raid — the Powder Alarm — triggered a mass militia mobilization that served as a dress rehearsal for what came next. By the time the column reached Lexington Green in April 1775, colonial riders had carried warning ahead through the night, and armed colonists met the British regulars rather than allowing an uncontested seizure. The shots fired that morning, and the fighting that followed at Concord’s North Bridge, were the opening battle of a war that began over an attempt at gun confiscation. This is not editorial embellishment. It is what Gage’s own written orders say.
Arms as an Unalienable Right, Not a Government Grant
The Declaration signed that same summer described rights as something with which people are “endowed by their Creator,” not privileges dispensed by a monarch. Sixteen years later, the men who had lived through Lexington and Concord ratified a Second Amendment declaring that the right of the people to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.” That phrase was not chosen carelessly. The founding generation had just fought a war that began because a government tried to take their weapons, and they wrote a guarantee designed to make certain no future government could do so lawfully again. The right was understood as preexisting — recognized by the Constitution, not created by it.
The President’s Words on the Eve of the 250th
Speaking on the eve of the anniversary, President Trump told the country: “In America, we do not need anyone’s permission to say what we think and to live as we please, to worship as we choose, or to keep and bear arms.” He went further, framing the right in explicitly religious and inalienable terms:
“Our rights here are given to us by the God who made us, and those rights shall not be infringed.”
That is the President’s paraphrase, not a recitation of the constitutional text. The actual Second Amendment reads: “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.” The two are distinct statements from two different sources, though the President’s closing words were plainly a deliberate echo of the Amendment’s own language. The substance of both, however, points the same direction: this is a right that belongs to the people by nature, not one that exists at the sufferance of the state.
Why the Framing From the Head of State Matters
It is significant, in my view, when the head of the executive branch, as the country marks two hundred fifty years of independence, describes the right to keep and bear arms in the same terms the founders themselves understood it — unalienable, preexisting, and not subject to permission. That framing is not incidental. It is the same principle Gage’s soldiers marched out to defeat in 1775 and failed to defeat, because an armed populace would not allow it. The lesson I draw on this anniversary is the one the founders wrote in blood two hundred fifty years ago: a free country endures because its people remain armed, and no government — however well-intentioned its successors may claim to be — gets to decide otherwise.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.