British General Thomas Gage didn’t like the concept of colonists having firearms and powder without the consent of the government. Gage pushed his luck… and colonists left the bodies of his Regulars and Royal Marines scattered along the Concord Road, triggering the Revolutionary War.

American patriots have always harbored a distrust of government, and with good reason. Government is at best a necessary evil, and the longer a government exists, the more it attempts to intrude into the lives of a free people and extort their liberty from them. If unsuccessfully checked, tyranny is the inevitable result. It isn’t a matter of if tyranny will result, it is only matter of how long it will take to arrive, and by which specific mechanism.

We’ve discussed the fact that given enough time, governments inevitably find a way to pry away the right of self-defense from its citizens. It has happened since the weapons of the day were bronze and iron, and continues in the age of steel and Kevlar. Always, always, the cries of disarmament are for “the public good.” It matters little whether the specific cry is for “the good of Rome” or “the decree of the Crown” or “the safety of the proletariat” or “for the children.” Those who would be the masters of the people must first disarm them of their weapons first, and they will always fins a “public good” to justify their tyranny.

In Massachusetts, police chiefs enjoy their fiefdoms, as does any good petty tyrant. They like to extend their powers and their reach, and cry out when they’ve been told that they may not seize more liberty from their citizens:

Top police officials and activists from Boston and area communities blasted the state Senate Tuesday for watering down gun control legislation by stripping a provision aimed at keeping rifles and shotguns out of the hands of dangerous people.

“I’m real disappointed in the Senate,” said Boston police Commissioner William B. Evans, standing with more than a dozen police officials and gun control advocates at the State House.

“What the Senate chose to do is placate the NRA instead of supporting law enforcement,” said John Rosenthal, founder of Stop Handgun Violence.

The unusual public criticism by police chiefs comes after the Senate last week voted to remove a House provision giving chiefs discretion to deny firearms identification cards, required to buy shotguns and rifles, to people they deem unsuitable. They now have that discretion over licenses to carry handguns.

“Are people really going to be any less dead if they’re killed with a rifle or a shotgun than a handgun?” Police Chief Terry Cunningham of Wellesley said at the morning press conference.

Crime with rifles and shotguns in Massachusetts is, of course, almost non-existent. The number of homicides in the Boston area committed with long guns in a given year can be counted on one hand. These petty tyrants aren’t complaining because they fear they are missing an opportunity to stop crime. They’re whining because they’ve seen their hopes of grabbing more power for themselves dashed, if only temporarily.

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This cast of politicians with badges was upset that a new citizen control law was watered down, and that they would not be able to turn down you application to own a rifle or shotgun on a whim. They are spitting angry that they will not have the legal ability to deny law-abiding citizens the right to purchase a shotgun or rifle arbitrarily and without just cause.

They are petty tyrants, furious over their failure to infringe further upon your constitutional rights.

I can only imagine how ashamed Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Dr. Joseph Warren, Paul Revere and other Patriots must be in their fellow Bay Staters. They risked their lives to earn a sacred liberty that the citizens of Massachusetts so eagerly give away. Is there any doubt at all how the Founders would have treated these petty tyrants? Chickens would be plucked for their feathers. Tar would be boiled. Homes would be fired. This is how patriots once dealt with those who threatened their liberty.

Today’s petty tyrants in Massachusetts probably have little reason to fear such an outcome, of course.

Residents of Massachusetts long ago traded essential liberty for the illusion of a little temporary safety. Their craven reaction of six million people cowering in their homes from a brother pair of terrorists—as over-militarized, under-trained officers shot more than a thousand rounds through homes and cars and into one another—made their cowardice evident to the entire world. “Boston strong” is a running joke.

We thank the 14,000 patriots that once took the field along the Concord Road and did their part to batter past agents of tyranny into submission.

It is too bad that spirit is in such short supply in Massachusetts these days. If it was, Massachusetts politicians (with badges and without) wouldn’t have even dare present such a law for fear of being run out-of-town by a justly angry mob.