Gun control/US/Old West

About

The degree to which there was gun control in the US Old West has apparently become politically relevant, though it's not entirely clear why it should be. The US Old West is often portrayed as lawless; if there was less gun control than now, that would seem to support the idea that gun control is necessary for civil society; if there was more, that could just as easily argue that we have allowed our standards to slip and are heading back towards the violence and lawlessness for which that era was notorious.

Links

to file

• 2021-05-07 Once upon a time in Texas, even cowboys were forbidden to carry six-shooters in public
• 2018-03-15 Did the Wild West Really have More Gun Control than We Do? by Dan Gifford (presumably the IMDb one): «Claims it did are partial truth political narratives intended to deceive. Truth is, the oft mentioned Dodge City and Tombstone laws were selectively enforced because they had far more to do with disarming political, business and crime rivals than protecting public safety.»
  • press release: GlobeNewswire
  • Gifford's argument seems to center around some checkable points of historical fact regarding the town of Tombstone, Arizona.
  • Gifford cites three articles as representative of the "more regulation back then" claim:
    1. 1990-09-02 Dodge City Believed in Strict Gun Control (opinion)
    2. 2013-04-17 Even the Old West had gun control by Mark S. Mellman, (original)
    3. 2012-07-23 De-mythologizing the Wild West: gun laws were actually stricter then than now - cites:
       • 2011-01-10 Even Tombstone had gun laws by Katherine Benton-Cohen, history professor at Georgetown University
       • 2011-09-09 Did the Wild West Have More Gun Control Than We Do Today? (see below)
  • «...while some frontier towns did enact ordinances against the carrying of weapons in town, they were enacted during a period when the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states. If a town wanted to ban a book, a play, a song or a newspaper story, it could.» (arguing that this proves nothing about the 2nd Amendment -- which isn't really the issue, is it? Also, is that true?)
• 2018-02-05 Gun Control Is as Old as the Old West (Smithsonian Magazine) «Contrary to the popular imagination, bearing arms on the frontier was a heavily regulated business.»
• 2011-11-09 Did the Wild West Have More Gun Control Than We Do Today? by Adam Winkler, Professor of Law, UCLA, and author of Gunfight: The Battle to Bear Arms in America
• 1999 Gun Control and the Old West by Ross Collins

related

• 2018-10-11 Were guns as common in the wild west days as they are in America now? (Quora discussion)