<P> Most American school children learn about the tyranny of King George III: taxation without representation . In the years prior to the American Revolution, the British, in response to the colonists' unhappiness over increasingly direct control and taxation of the colonies, imposed a gunpowder embargo on the colonies in an attempt to lessen the ability of the colonists to resist British encroachments into what the colonies regarded as local matters . Two direct attempts to disarm the colonial militias fanned what had been a smoldering resentment of British interference into the fires of war . </P> <P> These two incidents were the attempt to confiscate the cannon of the Concord and Lexington militias, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord of April 19, 1775, and the attempt, on April 20, to confiscate militia powder stores in the armory of Williamsburg, Virginia, which led to the Gunpowder Incident and a face off between Patrick Henry and hundreds of militia members on one side and the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, and British seamen on the other . The Gunpowder Incident was eventually settled by paying the colonists for the powder . </P> <P> According to historian Saul Cornell, states passed some of the first gun control laws, beginning with Kentucky's law to "curb the practice of carrying concealed weapons in 1813 ." There was opposition and, as a result, the individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment began and grew in direct response to these early gun control laws, in keeping with this new "pervasive spirit of individualism ." As noted by Cornell, "Ironically, the first gun control movement helped give birth to the first self - conscious gun rights ideology built around a constitutional right of individual self - defense ." </P> <P> The individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment first arose in Bliss v. Commonwealth (1822), which evaluated the right to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state pursuant to Section 28 of the Second Constitution of Kentucky (1799). The right to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state was interpreted as an individual right, for the case of a concealed sword cane . This case has been described as about "a statute prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons (that) was violative of the Second Amendment". </P>

When was the first gun law passed in the us