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Professor Cornell responded, with a copy of the
statute. (Thanks.) It is actually not a gunpowder storage
law, but one that prohibits leaving loaded firearms
in homes or buildings--and for an interesting and unsurprising
reason: it put people who were trying to put fires
out at risk. This makes perfect sense, because house fires
were common at the
time.
The other interesting aspect of the statute,
however, is that it suggests:
1. Having loaded firearms in the home was pretty
common--common enough that the intersection of
the sets of homes with loaded firearms and homes
that caught fire was considered a significant risk to
bystanders. It is possible that the law was
passed prospectively--not based on an actual problem--but
that doesn't seem terribly likely.
2. While it clearly prohibits leaving loaded
firearms in homes or buildings, it is very clear that the reason
was not general public safety, but specifically
fire safety. It does not appear that it would apply to a person
carrying a loaded firearm with them, although I
concede that the way it is worded, it would apply to someone
who carried a loaded firearm into their home.
(Not very practical to unload such weapons without firing
them at the time--and this had been prohibited
within town limits since at least 1719.)
3. Professor Cornell's claim was that this
demonstrated that the government did not see the right to
keep and bear arms as being individual in
nature. I think that's rather a strong claim to make, since the
statute only prohibits a particular mode of storage
that was dangerous to bystanders in the event of
fire--a loaded firearm in a building, and the
preamble makes clear that it was intended for that purpose
alone. One might say that this was a
regulation that was narrowly written for a particular hazard.
Clayton E. Cramer
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