I stole this from a fellow rkba-er on another list. It regards the Gary Wills, Carl T. Bogus assertion that guns were not owned by Americans in large numbers some 200 years because probate records rarely showed them as listed items. Of course, our anti-gun researchers offer no test that such a method is an accurate measure of gun ownership, nevertheless...
<snip> Benjamin Franklin was involved in the militia movement in Pennsylvania. Let's see what he had to say about firearms proliferation at the time:
"If this now flourishing City, and greatly improving Colony, is destroy'd and ruin'd, it will not be for want of Numbers of Inhabitants able to bear Arms in its defence. 'Tis computed that we have at least (exclusive of Quakers) 60,000 Fighting Men, acquainted with Fire-Arms, many of them Hunters and Marksmen, hardy and bold." Benjamin Franklin, B.F. Papers, vol. III, p.202
How could 60,000 men, practically the entire adult male population of Pennsylvania at the time, be familiar with arms if only 7% possessed them?
"As Use is in our Case more to be regarded than Uniformity, and it would be diffucult so suddenly to procure such a Number of Arms, exactly of the same Kind, the general word Firelock is used (rather than Musket, which is the Name of a particular kind of Gun) most People having a Firelock of some kind or other already in their hands." Benjamin Franklin, Franklin Papers, vol. III, p. 208
It would seem that Franklin believed that most people already possessed some type of firearm at the time. Which do you accept, Will's obviously flawed research, or Franklin's direct observations? <snip>