Reply #36: It fascinates me that "liberals" would look down on gun owners..

[spin]

considering the history of our country.

The revolutionaries in the American Revolution and the French Revolution used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of tyrannical rule. The nineteenth century saw liberal governments established in nations across Europe, Latin America, and North America. Liberal ideas spread even further in the twentieth century, when liberal democracies triumphed in two world wars and survived major ideological challenges from fascism and communism. Conservatism, fundamentalism, and military dictatorship remain powerful opponents of liberalism. Today, liberals are organized politically on all major continents. They have played a decisive role in the growth of republics, the spread of civil rights and civil liberties, the establishment of the modern welfare state, the institution of religious toleration and religious freedom, and the development of globalization. Political scientist Alan Wolfe wrote, "liberalism is the answer for which modernity is the question".

***snip***

The history of liberalism spans the better part of the last four centuries, beginning in the English Civil War and continuing after the end of the Cold War. Liberalism started as a major doctrine and intellectual endeavor in response to the religious wars gripping Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, although the historical context for the ascendancy of liberalism goes back to the Middle Ages.The first notable incarnation of liberal unrest came with the American Revolution, and liberalism fully exploded as a comprehensive movement against the old order during the French Revolution, which set the pace for the future development of human history.
emphasis added
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

The first battles of the American Revolution began over gun control.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War.<9><10> They were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy (present-day Arlington), and Cambridge, near Boston. The battles marked the outbreak of open armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in the mainland of British North America.

About 700 British Army regulars, under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, were given secret orders to capture and destroy military supplies that were reportedly stored by the Massachusetts militia at Concord. Through effective intelligence gathering, Patriot colonials had received word weeks before the expedition that their supplies might be at risk and had moved most of them to other locations. They also received details about British plans on the night before the battle and were able to rapidly notify the area militias of the enemy movement.emphasis added
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Lexington_and_Concord

Why did General Gage attempt to seize the armory at concord?

For the same reason every despot through history has disarmed their adversary... The easiest way to enslave people is to remove their means to resist. Once the armory, or the stockpile of weapons and munitions was destroyed the British would have an easier time suppressing a revolution. Only with a means of self defense were the colonists able to through off the chains of tyranny.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_General_Gage_attempt_to_seize_the_armory_at_concord