whites, particularly on plantations, were stacking up the arms. Scholars who pored over the probate records revealed that “50% of all wealthholders in the Thirteen Colonies in 1774 owned guns.” That percentage soared to 69 percent when isolated to the South. North Carolina (77 percent), South Carolina (70 percent), Virginia (68 percent), and Maryland (62 percent) were all well above the average for the thirteen colonies. Indeed, 81 percent of slave-owning estates had firearms, and plantations with the largest number of enslaved people were 4.3 times more likely to have guns than those with few
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