[reprinted with author's permission from twunch. ]
Wikipediasays that 8,000 Americans died in combat during the entire Revolutionary War (April 1775 to September 1783; roughly 7.5 years.)
In 2011, there were 8,583 murders committed with guns in the United States.
As an exercise, I thought about comparing the US casualties in some famous Revolutionary War Battles to the casualties during some recent US mass shootings.
1) Let's start with the Battles of Lexington and Concord vs. the Virginia Tech Massacre.
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the revolutionary war. Beginning as a small skirmish, the number of combatants rose throughout the day until finally an estimated 3,800 Americans were exchanging fire with 1,500 British Regulars.
For all of the bullets spent by the British, the total number of American Deaths at the Battles of Lexington and Concord number only 47.
The Virginia Tech Massacre took place in 2007. A 23-year old student with a history of mental illness was able to purchase handguns through loopholes in the law requiring background checks and ammunition through eBay. Armed with a Glock 19 and Walther P22, Seung-Hui Cho managed to kill 33 people including himself.
The British Army manage to win this round.
However if you consider it took them 1500 guns to kill 47 people, you're looking at an efficiency of 47/1500= 0.031 Dead People Per Gun.
Now compare that to Seung-Hui Cho's efficiency with two guns for 33 dead Americans.
2/33= 16.5 Dead People Per Gun.
Seung-Hui Cho's guns are 527 more efficient than the British Soldiers at the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
2) Let's take it back a little further to the famed "Boston Massacre" of 1770 which foreshadowed the coming revolution. Let's compare the Boston Massacre with the Wisconsin Sikh Temple Massacre of 2012.
In the Boston Massacre, a group of politically agitated partisans attacked seven British soldiers with snowballs. The soldiers fired into the crowd and killed five people.
At the Wisconsin Sikh Temple Massacre, a man with public statements on racial hatred who had been involuntarily discharged from the army was able to legally purchase a semi-automatic and walk into a place of worship and begin indiscriminately shooting. He passed the background checks to purchase this handgun.
Well, it was a squeaker but Wade Michael Page managed to outscore the British Army here, 6 to 5.
3) Since I'm in South Carolina today, I thought I'd pit the defining Southern Battle of the Revolutionary War: The Battle of Cowpens versus the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting.
At this battle, 1150 trained British soldiers shot at over a thousand American soldiers and managed to kill 25 of them! However Adam Lanza managed to kill 26 by himself (27 including himself.)
Lanza pulls off the upset here, 27 to 25.
4) Lest you think I'm cherry picking battles from early in the Revolutionary war, let's jump ahead to the War of 1812 and the Battle of Detroit where 2,500 Americans engaged the British and Native American forces.
Let's compare that to the 2012 Aurora Shooting where one guy walked into a movie theater.
Shocking upset here.
British forces killed 7 people. James Holmes killed 12 and injured 59. Were people just terrible at fighting in 1812? How is it that over a thousand soldiers are less effective at killing people than a single untrained shooter at a movie theater?
I feel like these militias were simply not very well-regulated if they can't kill people with more success than mentally ill people at midnight screenings of Batman.
5) One last one: The Siege of Fort Ticonderoga versus the Columbine High School Massacre.
The 1777 Siege of Fort Ticonderoga pitted 3,000 Americans against 8,000 British.
The 1999 Columbine High School Massacre pitted two guys against a high school.
You have to give it to Dylan and Eric, they just wanted it more. Despite being outgunned by nearly 11,000 people they still managed to outscore the combined British and American forces in corpses 13 to 12.
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You could argue I'm cherrypicking battles here. Certainly many battles had far more fatalities than the ones I named here but the fact that the US has seen more gun fatalities this year than during the entirety of the Revolutionary War which spawned our 2nd Amendment I think should be considered.
The killing machines you can buy at Wal*Mart are far and away more powerful, deadly and efficient than any imagined by anybody 200 years ago.
I don't think there's anyway you'd remember the names of these madmen if they'd tried to shoot up schools, churches and movie theaters with a musket.