The United States has 120.5 guns per 100 people, or about 393,347,000 guns, which is the highest total and per capita number in the world. 22% of Americans own one or more guns (35% of men and 12% of women). America’s pervasive gun culture stems in part from its colonial history, revolutionary roots, frontier expansion, and the Second Amendment, which states: “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.”

Proponents of more gun control laws state that the Second Amendment was intended for militias; that gun violence would be reduced; that gun restrictions have always existed; and that a majority of Americans, including gun owners, support new gun restrictions.

Opponents say that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns; that guns are needed for self-defense from threats ranging from local criminals to foreign invaders; and that gun ownership deters crime rather than causes more crime.

Guns in Colonial and Revolutionary America

Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to Catholics, slaves, indentured servants, and Native Americans; regulating the storage of gun powder in homes; banning loaded guns in Boston houses; and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned. [1][2]

Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the American Revolutionary War. [105] Several colonies’ gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. [105]

Some laws, including in Connecticut (1643) and at least five other colonies, required “at least one adult man in every house to carry a gun to church or other public meetings” in order to protect against attacks by Native Americans; prevent theft of firearms from unattended homes; and, as a 1743 South Carolina law stated, safeguard against “insurrections and other wicked attempts of Negroes and other Slaves.” [105] Other laws required immigrants to own guns in order to immigrate or own land. [105]

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution was ratified on Dec. 15, 1791. The notes from the Constitutional Convention do not mention an individual right to a gun for self-defense. [106] Some historians suggest that the idea of an individual versus a collective right would not have occurred to the Founding Fathers because the two were intertwined and inseparable: there was an individual right in order to fulfill the collective right of serving in the militia. [105][106]

Although guns were common in colonial and revolutionary America, so were gun restrictions. Laws included banning the sale of guns to Native Americans (though colonists frequently traded guns with Native Americans for goods such as corn and fur); banning indentured servants (mainly the Irish) and slaves from owning guns; and exempting a variety of professions from owning guns (including doctors, school masters, lawyers, and millers). [105]

A 1792 federal law required that every man eligible for militia service own a gun and ammunition suitable for military service, report for frequent inspection of their guns, and register his gun ownership on public records. [101] Many Americans owned hunting rifles or pistols instead of proper military guns, and even though the penalty fines were high (over $9,000 in 2014 dollars), they were levied inconsistently and the public largely ignored the law.

State Gun Laws: Slave Codes and the “Wild West”

From the 1700s through the 1800s, so-called “slave codes” and, after slavery was abolished in 1865, “black codes” (and, still later, “Jim Crow” laws) prohibited black people from owning guns and laws allowing the ownership of guns frequently specified “free white men.” [98] For example, an 1833 Georgia law stated, “it shall not be lawful for any free person of colour in this state, to own, use, or carry fire arms of any description whatever… that the free person of colour, so detected in owning, using, or carrying fire arms, shall receive upon his bare back, thirty-nine lashes, and that the fire arm so found in the possession of said free person of colour, shall be exposed for public sale.” [

Despite images of the “Wild West” from movies, cities in the frontier often required visitors to check their guns with the sheriff before entering the town.  In Oct. 1876, Deadwood, Dakota Territory passed a law stating that no one could fire a gun without the mayor’s consent. [A sign in Dodge City, Kansas in 1879 read, “The Carrying of Fire Arms Strictly Prohibited.” The first law passed in Dodge City was a gun control law that read “any person or persons found carrying concealed weapons in the city of Dodge or violating the laws of the State shall be dealt with according to law.”

Federal Gun Laws in the 1900s

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on Feb. 14, 1929 in Chicago resulted in the deaths of seven gangsters associated with “Bugs” Moran (an enemy of Al Capone) and set off a series of debates and laws to ban machine guns. Originally enacted in 1934 in response to mafia crimes, the National Firearms Act (NFA) imposes a $200 tax and a registration requirement on the making and transfer of certain guns, including shotguns and rifles with barrels shorter than 18 inches (“short-barreled”), machine guns, firearm mufflers and silencers, and specific firearms labeled as “any other weapons” by the NFA. Most guns are excluded from the Act.