The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #148617   Message #3452526
Posted By: Sandy Mc Lean
15-Dec-12 - 09:28 PM
Thread Name: BS: Shooting tragedies and guns
Subject: RE: BS: Shooting tragedies and guns
"Witness the fact that all the Founding Fathers, including the very people who wrote the Constitution, owned guns."
Perhaps the fault lies with these founding fathers. Not to throw in a red herring but did not many of them own slaves as well? It is not hard to comprehend how guns could be used to control slaves!

Of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 49% owned slaves.

The slave owners were:

Richard Bassett (DE)
Jacob Broom (DE)
John Dickinson (DE)
George Read (DE)
William Houstoun (GA)
William Few (GA)
William Samuel Johnson (CT)
Daniel Carroll (MD)
Luther Martin (MD)
John Francis Mercer (MD)
Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer (MD)
William Livingston (NJ)
William Blount (NC)
William Richardson Davie (NC)
Alexander Martin (NC)
Richard Dobbs Spaight (NC)
Pierce Butler (SC)
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (SC)
Charles Pinckney (SC)
John Rutledge (SC)
John Blair (VA)
James Madison (VA)
George Mason (VA)
Edmund Randolph (VA)
George Washington (VA)
George Wythe (VA)
Robert Morris (PA)

There are borderline cases among the above.

Robert Morris did not personally own slaves but did own a slave ship and invested in plantations using slaves. I've listed him as a slave owner since he was a direct participant in slavery and the slave trade.

Some slave owners emancipated their slaves (Richard Bassett and John Dickinson). Other slave owners opposed slavery and supported abolition (Jacob Broom and William Samuel Johnson). Other slave owners opposed the slave trade if not slavery itself.

Of the 26 slaveowners, 19 owned multiple slaves and relied on slave labor for their livelihood.