Gun regulations made the West not so Wild

Summary: For over a century, America had effective gun regulations. The Republicans destroyed it. Exploiting our gullibility and ignorance, they erased this history from our minds. Here is a reminder of what we lost.

America has a long history. But not only do we often refuse to learn from it, we have forgotten much. It has gone down the memory hole, replaced by more politically useful lies. For example, the opening of the Wild West was one of America’s greatest challenges, our response to a growth surge with few precedents in history. Its lessons can help us today, if only we remembered them. How did they manage a society with widespread ownership and open carry of guns?

For a picture of the famous Kansas cattle towns, where cowboys came to trade and play, see “Guns, Murder, and Plausibility“ by Robert R. Dykstra (Prof History, State U of NY – Albany) in Historical Methods, December 2010. Countless books and films describe Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell. Violence in these towns was concentrated by neighborhood, as it is in today’s America. Homicide was at levels far lower than that shown in cowboy movies – and lower than in some of our inner cities.

“{Western towns’} population consisted of relatively young males. They commit most murders.  …the middle-class respectables of Dodge City, male and female residents of the north side of town, faced {lower risk} of being murdered as the south-side whores, gamblers, and transient cowboys.  Of the dozen founding fathers of the town’s business community …all except one (who died of illness) survived the entire cattle-trading era without a scratch. …

“Dodge City, for example, was very well policed – headquartering over the 10 years it was a cowboy town a deputy US marshal, a county sheriff, an undersheriff, deputy sheriffs as needed, a city marshal, an assistant marshal, policemen as needed, and two township constables. … Five of its 17 adult killings – almost one third – were justifiable homicides by officers. The police meant business.”

The fun stories about the Wild West told in the 19th century’s penny dreadfuls have become part of our collective memory. But myths make a weak foundation for a great nation’s public policy. Historians have documented our real history. My favorite book about this is Adam Winkler’s Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America (2011). He is a professor of constitutional law at UCLA (see his bio and publications). He discusses his research at the HuffPo in “Did the Wild West Have More Gun Control Than We Do Today?”

“Guns were obviously widespread on the frontier. Out in the untamed wilderness, you needed a gun to be safe from bandits, natives, and wildlife. In the cities and towns of the West, however, the law often prohibited people from toting their guns around. A visitor arriving in Wichita, Kansas in 1873, the heart of the Wild West era, would have seen signs declaring, ‘Leave Your Revolvers At Police Headquarters, and Get a Check.’

“A check? That’s right. When you entered a frontier town, you were legally required to leave your guns at the stables on the outskirts of town or drop them off with the sheriff, who would give you a token in exchange. You checked your guns then like you’d check your overcoat today at a Boston restaurant in winter. Visitors were welcome, but their guns were not.

“In my new book …there’s a photograph taken in Dodge City in 1879. Everything looks exactly as you’d imagine: wide, dusty road; clapboard and brick buildings; horse ties in front of the saloon. Yet right in the middle of the street is something you’d never expect. There’s a huge wooden billboard announcing, ‘The Carrying of Firearms Strictly Prohibited.’”

“While people were allowed to have guns at home for self-protection, frontier towns usually barred anyone but law enforcement from carrying guns in public.

“When Dodge City residents organized their municipal government, do you know what the very first law they passed was? A gun control law. They declared that ‘any person or persons found carrying concealed weapons in the city of Dodge or violating the laws of the State shall be dealt with according to law.’ Many frontier towns, including Tombstone, Arizona – the site of the infamous ‘Shootout at the OK Corral‘ – also barred the carrying of guns openly. …

“The story of guns in America is far more complex and surprising than we’ve often been led to believe. We’ve always had a right to bear arms, but we’ve also always had gun control. Even in the Wild West, Americans balanced these two and enacted laws restricting guns in order to promote public safety. Why should it be so hard to do the same today?”

More about the Wild West

Richard Shenkman (founder and editor of History News Network) wrote Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of American History (1988). It describes how in frontier towns the “carrying of dangerous weapons of any time, concealed or otherwise, by persons other than law enforcement officers …was nearly always proscribed.” The shoot-out at the OK Corral was sparked in October 1881 by the Earp’s arrest of rustler and robber Ike Clanton for violating Tombstone’s Ordinance No.9: “To Provide against Carrying of Deadly Weapons.”

A long line of research going back to Robert R. Dykstra’s (prof history, SUNY Albany) book The Cattle Towns (1968), which shows that the Wild West was not very wild. There were only 15 murders in Dodge City in 1877 – 1886, aprox. 1.5 per year. This was typical of the wildest frontier towns in the West, most of whom had strict gun controls. Mining camps, which had few laws and less enforcement, often had murder rates of 4 or 5 per year (for more about this see his 1996 article). Richard White (prof history, Stanford) describes the effect of gun control: “Those towns such as Bodie and Aurora that did not disarm men tended to bury significantly more of them.” That is the bottom line from his book “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West (1993).

A look at Wild Wyoming

Phil Roberts, professor of history emeritus at the U of Wyoming, reminds us of gun regulations in the early days of wild Wyoming.

“In a random check of the earliest town ordinances for six Wyoming towns, I found that five of the six had historical ordinances specifically stating that it was against the law to carry a firearm, either openly or concealed, in the town limits. Violations could lead to fines and jail time. …In the case of Cheyenne, the ordinance was passed Sept. 30, 1867, just 88 days after General Dodge picked the spot where the “magic city” was to be. …

“’It shall be the duty of the Police officers to arrest any person found in the act of violating this ordinance except in the cases of strangers and non-residents of this city who shall be first informed of this ordinance and allowed thirty minutes to comply herewith and should they refuse or neglect to do so within that time they shall be held answerable to the penalties hereof.’

“In Lusk, it took a bit more time from the town founding to its incorporation a decade later, but the council passed the following ordinance on Aug. 1, 1898 …

“In Worland, a regulation against carrying guns in the town limits was the ninth ordinance passed by the town council: ‘It shall be unlawful for any person in the Town of Worland to bear upon his person, concealed or openly, any fire arm or other deadly weapon within the limits of said town.’  It was passed and adopted unanimously by the council, consisting of several old-time cattlemen and some pioneer businessmen, on May 9, 1906, in the first year of Worland’s existence.

“Casper had passed a similar ordinance a year earlier in 1897.”

For more about gun regulations in the Wild West, see “Gun Control in the Old West? Facts and Fiction“ by Anne Carole at Hearts Through History.

Conclusions

For well over a century, America had a functional and rational system of gun regulations. It combined Federal, State, and local laws, allowing flexibility for local and changing conditions. It was not perfect. It could have been slowly improved over time, based on the experience in 50 States – and that of other nations.

The Republicans destroyed that, in an act of massive social engineering. Exploiting our gullibility and ignorance, they erased that history from our minds. We can remember what we have lost and rebuild it. America’s gun violence need not make us a fearsome outlier among civilized nations.

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Ideas! For some shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.

An antidote to conservatives’ propaganda: “What Researchers Learned About Gun Violence Before Congress Killed Funding” by Joaquin Sapien at ProPublica, Feb 2013 — “We spoke with the scientist who led the government’s research on guns.”

Here are the findings of an exhaustive study of mass shooters. They also give recommendations, which appear to me to be either extremely difficult to do or probably ineffective.

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about gun violence and regulation, and especially these …

1. The Founders talk to us about guns for a well-regulated militia.
2. But Hitler confiscated guns, leaving Germans helpless!
3. Let’s look at the Second Amendment, cutting through the myths and spin.
4. Myth-busting about gun use in the Wild West.
5. Second amendment scholarship (using money to reshape America).
6. Do guns make us more safe, or less? Let’s look at the research.
7. The number of children killed by guns in America makes us exceptional, not better.
8. Cut thru the lies and myths to understand guns in America.
9. Why Americans love guns and don’t care about the blood.
10. Debunking the hysteria about mass shootings.
11. Is an armed society a safe society? – Spoiler: no.
12. Fury at new mass shootings. Disinterest in the daily killings.

Interesting books about guns

The Cattle Towns (1968) by Robert R. Dykstra’s (prof history, SUNY Albany).

Also see Richard White’s (prof history, Stanford) “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West (1993).