textfiles/politics/GUNS/rbaisue.txt

History Shows That Efforts To Limit Right to Bear Arms Is A
Cultural Issue ÄUnrelated to Extent of Crime

Reprinted from Massachusetts Liberty

A lot of arguments have been made that we should ban today's
plastic guns and Saturday night specials.

A little over a century ago, similar bans were proposed.
History illustrates that gun prohibition is a cultural issue,
not a criminological one.

Cartridge repeaters were rare, were expensive, had weak actions,
were sometimes unsafe, were always low-powered, and were
condemned by the military as being ammunition wasters.  Compared
to the muzzle loading rifles then in use, multi-shot rifles were
certainly unsporting for hunting.

Some politicians and newspaper editorial writers sounded the
alarm that the proliferation of repeating cartridge arms would
almost certainly result in their getting into the hands of
IndiansÄwhose hit and run guerrilla tactics against invading
white men would be immensely enhanced by repeating firearms.

Since there were only a few low-powered but expensive Smith
Wesson .22 pocket guns so favored by gamblers, prostitutes and
other unsavory characters, proposals to ban cartridge guns drew
quite a few votes.

The first gun control laws in this country were enacted about
100 years ago in the deep south.  They were part of what's
commonly referred to as the black codes.

The black codes were a series of laws that were enacted by
Southern legislatures shortly after the era of reconstruction,
when white supremacists regained control of Southern
legislatures.

Their first action was to enact a body of legislation that would
in fact repress newly freed blacks, that would curtail their
basic freedoms, that would keep them in a position of both
economic and political subservience to white society.  Among the
rights that southern legislatures were very eager to deny to
blacks was the right to self-defense.

Typical of this aspect of the black codes is an 1870 law enacted
by the state of Tennessee which banned the sale of all handguns
except Army and Navy model Colts.

This is a very ingenious form of economic discrimination.  It
works like this:  most of the members of the Ku Klux Klan and
other racist groups were Civil War veterans.  They served in
confederate forces during the Civil War.  They had their guns
and if these were handguns they tended to be the more expensive
Army/Navy model Colts.

However, most newly freed blacks were too poor to afford to buy
the more expensive handgun.  So by banning what would today be
designated Saturday night specials, Southern legislatures were
in effect able to disarm blacks.

In conclusion, this quotation from B. Bruce Briggs' seminal
article in "The Great American Gun War" makes my point:

"But underlying the gun control struggle is a fundamental
division in our nation.  The intensity of passion on this issue
suggests to me that we are experiencing a sort of low grade war
going on between two alternative views of what America is and
ought to be.

"On the one side are those who take bourgeois Europe as a model
of a civilized society:  a society just, equitable, and
democratic; but well ordered, with the lines of responsibility
and authority clearly drawn, and with decisions made rationally
and correctly by intelligent men for the entire nation.  to such
people, hunting is atavistic, personal violence is shameful, and
uncontrolled gun ownership is a blot upon civilization.

"On the other side is a group of people who do not tend to be
especially articulate or literate, and whose world view is
rarely expressed in print.  Their model is that of the
independent frontiersman who takes care of himself and his
family with no interference from the state.  They are
conservative in the sense that they cling to America's unique
re-modern tradition Ä a non-feudal society with a sort of
medieval-liberty writ large for every man."

Posted by Freedom Fighters BBs  406-295-5611


***