Every so often, but especially in August before school starts, I like to see some evidence of my private-school tuition dollars at work. So I recently asked my sons what provoked the first gunshots in the American Revolutionary War.

“The Tea Act of 1773,” said the 12-year-old, apparently tossing out the first Colonial grievance that came to mind.

“King George’s Stamp Act!” screamed his younger brother, apparently mistaking our conversation for a televised game show with prizes.

“You're both wrong,” I said.

For many years, the American colonists’ disaffection was manifest as a strictly political and social movement, free of armed conflict. A chain of British insults — the Proclamation of 1763, the Quartering Act and Stamp Act of 1765, the Tea Act of 1773, the Intolerable Acts of 1774 — typically were met by a flurry of newspaper and pamphlet publishing, protest meetings, speeches, boycotts, and occasional civil disobedience. Local church leaders even called for days of fasting and prayer.

This non-violent confrontation with Britain might have continued indefinitely, but, in April, 1775, colonists faced a challenge which would circumscribe what they were willing to fight and die for.

Only when British General Thomas Gage attempted to confiscate colonists’ gunpowder did the first armed conflict with Britain erupt at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Colonists knew that they couldn’t allow the British to seize guns or ammunition, or their cause would be lost. In a defining moment, America became the ultimate single-issue organization, and our single issue was the right to arms.

The unmistakable lesson here is that, to secure liberty and civil society, Colonial Americans first had to preserve their right to possess firearms. But are we to believe that the same approach is somehow required today? In this year of burgeoning government, political corruption, and shrinking personal freedom, the answer is yes. As Charlton Heston explained in his speech to the National Press Club in 1997: “The right to keep and bear arms is the one right that allows rights to exist at all.”

Until Second Amendment rights gain a full and robust standing in 21st century law, we remain in the lingering shadow of General Gage and his tyrannical strategy of public disarmament. In 1775, we quickly became a “one-issue organization” to safeguard freedom. Today, the remarkable degeneration of our free society demands the same unique focus.

My sons enjoyed learning more about the battles of Lexington and Concord. And when they stand with me in the voting booth this November, they'll know exactly why I'm a single-issue voter toting a list of endorsements from the Second Amendment organizations to which I belong.