Food and Guns Part 3
Bacon Rebellion and the Burning of Jamestown, Courtesy of The New York Public Library
Masters in the southern colonies granted indentured servants the opportunity to hunt on Sundays. However, the use of guns to do so changed after Daniel Bacon led a multi-ethnic rebellion in Virginia in 1676. British oligarchs thereafter took steps to repress a commoners ‘revolution such as passing legislation that restricted access to firearms to white commoners thus giving them a privilege that politically aligned them to elites and marginalized people of African descent. As a result, free and enslaved African-Americans rarely had access to guns for the purpose of hunting for wild game except as soldiers in colonial militias, revolutions, and civil wars. Similar gun restrictions for “negroes” occurred following slave rebellions in other parts of the Americas.
