"The issue of restrictions on guns in terms of carrying should be left up to local control," Hatch said. "I believe in the Old West thing - there's a sign at the front of the town saying, 'Check your guns before you enter.' "I've seen variations of this statement before and suspect much of it is movie fiction assumed to be true. I'd heard that the Earps imposed disarmament in Tombstone, but I don't know how much of that is movie lore vs actual historically-recorded law. I did find this reference to the "Dead Line" in Dodge. Brutal--shooting armed citizens on sight "if an officer was so inclined, and meant certain arrest." That's what Utah's latter day gungrabbers seem intent on emulating.
I confess ignorance here, and wonder who has done research on gun control in the Old West to know if this was a common occurrence or a rarity, and whether or not local edicts would have been backed by state or territorial law if challenged. Is there an authority on frontier gun laws?
I put the question to Clayton Cramer, who offered:
I've long been curious about this. It is clearly the case that some frontier law officers imposed such rules to deal with drunken cowboys. I don't know how common such laws were; they have left very little case law for the Wild West era. There is a bit of case law from the close of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century--and generally, local laws completely banning carrying of guns didn't do well. For example, Lewiston, Idaho, had a ban on carrying of guns in town, struck down by the Idaho Supreme Court case In re Brickey (Ida. 1902).
State v. Rosenthal (Vt. 1903) struck down a similar Rutland ordinance. City of Salina v. Blaksley (Kan. 1905) is one of the relatively few such bans of that period that survived court challenge. You can find other examples of the period in _For the Defense of Themselves and the State_.
I'm no expert, by any means, but I am a student of history so maybe I can shed some light on this.
ReplyDeleteRemember that most of the people who settled the west came from the east. Most of them came from Europe.
There was already a fairly long history of some forms of "gun control" in the early days of that migration - and a great deal of it in Europe. Large groups of people, such as the Highland Scots, were forbidden by English law to have even so much as a decent knife for a very long time.
A lot of eastern and European folks believed that "civilization" meant leaving protection of citizens to government entities of one sort or another. Many women, especially, worked very hard to disarm and "civilize" the men around them.
There were also quite a few rash young men - cowboys, freighters, railroad men and others - who would fight at the drop of a hat.
I'm sure those "civilized" folks were at loggerheads with the young men over more than just gunplay. So it is no surprise that communities and officials tried various things to control the problem.
I suspect that gun "bans" were no more successful then than they are now. But if you believe in something, the practical or logical implications don't always matter a whole lot.
Well, that's probably not much help... but it's something to think about. Human nature doesn't really change. Some people will always want to control the actions and property of others. Some always have.
Interesting. They want to ban our guns today because the Second Amendment was so we could fight bears and hostile Indians, and they want to ban guns today because there were gun bans when people had a real possibility of facing bears and savages.
ReplyDeleteDoes it ever get boring for them, do you think, to be so right all the time? I'd be exhausted.
I probably can't say anything new. If a case goes to a state level court, that can mean that local communities are preempted forever. Such is the case in Vermont to this day. I once read a huge book on 2A case law. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, state supreme courts overturned at least a dozen convictions over carrying a weapon. A few of these, in Ky, FL, and LA, the court said that government could not forbid or license carrying openly or concealed. (In FL, unless you were black). Most of the courts said a locality could forbid concealed weapons, but not open carry. So the gentleman from Utah is assuredly wrong about that. Open carry, while not as good as concealed, was a right respected world wide for a very long time. I know some frontier towns did ban concealed carry, while in the towns saloons.
ReplyDeleteIn Japan over the weekend, a toy vendor at a festival got tired of being ridiculed, so he got in his car, ran over some people in the crowd and attacked others with a sickle. Killed one, injured others.
ReplyDelete$5.98 at Wal-Mart. No registration, no waiting period. Garden tools department.
obviously someone should do something about these "assault" high capacity sniper sickles!
ReplyDeletefor example, since we know you're all criminals waiting to happen, we're going to make you wait... well how about 30 days? ...after which you get your sickle and have at it. go to town!
David - 'frontier' can cover a lot of different circumstances.
ReplyDeleteI'll narrow it down a bit...
Edicts against various weaponry were likely unheard of until folks in a locality started minding each other's business wholesale and began calling for Lawn Order.
Isn't one of the definitions of a 'state' that it possesses a monopoly over the use of overwhelming deadly force?