Gun control is again on the public agenda. Good, or bad? We need more? Less? All we know – or think we know – is that experts estimate, and we don’t really know, because no one keeps track, is that there are likely about as many guns in private hands in America as there are people.
That would be 320 million. That is a lot of guns. Including, of course, everything from dainty pieces easily slipped into a handbag or a pocket – to massive weapons that even Rambo might strain to carry.
We also do not know, of course, where the guns are or who has them. We – by which I mean our government – are not allowed to keep track. Nor are we allowed to study their effects on society and public health the way, say, we can study the causes and effects of poorly designed cars or highways. Or the workings of various diseases and how they affect society. And maybe ways we can prevent the clear dangers or minimize their hazards. Or make them safer.
But guns? Verboten. Which I expect will remain the case, because I’m too old to spend my time pining for things that will never happen. I don’t care what tantalizing promises are made.
But that wasn’t always the case. Our forefathers, those lovers of liberty, sure believed in gun control. They actually ordered men – at least white men who swore allegiance to the new nation and who would be fit to be part of a militia – to have guns. And to bring them regularly to musters, and to register them with local authorities.
Yeah, they were keeping track. Here in America!
And that was just the start of it. In 2011, Adam Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America, wrote a short, info-packed piece, “The Secret History of Guns” for The Atlantic magazine.
One of the most interesting parts concerns the importance of gun control in maintaining white Southern rule. After the war, Northern generals told all soldiers, black and white, Southern or Northern, to take their guns home, but this didn’t set well with white Southerners.
After President Lincoln’s assassination and with the willing complicity of President Andrew Johnson (a Southern sympathizer), Southern lawmakers passed what were called the Black Codes, a fairly complex series of laws blatantly designed to restrict African Americans’ freedom, limiting them to work in a labor-based economy emphasizing low wages and debt. And one common provision was a section forbidding black people from possessing firearms.
To enforce it, white men began to ride at night, terrorizing African Americans and confiscating their firearms. The most famous of these “disarmament posses” became – surprise! – the Ku Klux Klan.
(Another organization born in the aftermath of the war was, interestingly, the National Rifle Association, formed by men who were horrified by the poor shooting skills shown by Northern urban whites. It was intended to improve people’s gun familiarity and to promote firearm safety – which remained its focus until the 1970s, when a coup at the top installed people who eschew any kind of gun regulation.)
The growing re-subjugation of African Americans led Congress to fight back, ultimately leading to the nation’s first civil rights act (1866) and eventually the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing that all citizens would be – as Winkler said – “secure in their fundamental rights,” including their “right to keep and bear arms.”
The advent of the 20th century saw a growing national interest in controlling the growing availability of ever more lethal weapons – and the NRA was right with the program.
In the ’20s, the NRA’s president (a champion marksman) helped draft the Uniform Firearms Law, “a model of state-level gun control legislation.” Carrying a concealed firearm required a permit, and permits were available only to “suitable” people with a “proper reason for carrying” guns, and even then after only a two-day waiting period.
The NRA also endorsed the National Firearms Act of 1934, which imposed a large tax and registration requirements on the suddenly proliferating “gangster guns” – sawed off shotguns and machine guns.
Later, in the ’60s, a wave of political assassinations by gun, along with generally increasing gun violence and terrible riots in some major cities, galvanized Americans, who began calling for more gun control.
And then – one of my favorite bits of gun history – came the tale of the Black Panthers and the budding political career of one Ronald Reagan and their little heralded contribution to the cause of gun control.
In 1967, the civil rights movement – a nonviolent mass effort – was under way, but it wasn’t fast enough for a group of young black men and women in Oakland, Calif. They’d had enough of what they thought were out-of-control white police officers who controlled their community with threats and bullying. The young people took it upon themselves to begin patrolling – and watching – the police. They would go to a scene of an altercation and – peacefully – observe and call errant officers out.
Then they added a new twist. They armed themselves. The open carrying of firearms was perfectly legal. And so, armed with guns and law books, the Black Panthers, as they dubbed themselves, became a real thorn in the sides of Oakland police officers.
Not surprisingly, they in turn alarmed overwhelmingly white lawmakers in Sacramento, who began to consider legislation to ban carrying of a loaded firearm in any California city. This was in May of 1967.
When the Panthers got wind of the proposal, they had an idea. They would go – armed, legally, to the teeth – to the state capitol and lobby against the bill.
And, as Winkler tells the story, when the 20 well-armed black men and women began mounting the steps to the building, out on the lawn were a bunch of eighth-graders sharing a fried chicken lunch with new governor Ronald Reagan before a tour of the building.
Well. To say that the Black Panthers lobbying attempt failed is an understatement. The sight of 20 fully armed African Americans terrified white legislators. The bill quickly got tougher – with an added provision barring anyone other than law enforcement from bringing a loaded firearm into the state capitol – and sped through the legislature. With, I might add, the support of the NRA.
And Reagan was in full-throated agreement. He told reporters that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” Guns, he said, were “a ridiculous way to solve problems.” The legislation would “work no hardships on the honest citizen.” And the NRA agreed.
As it did when Congress, inspired by the recent assassinations, passed the 1968 Gun Control Act.
Today, of course, the NRA has changed its tune. And we’re living through a time when nearly anyone who can breathe may, in many states, carry a deadly weapon capable firing 20 bullets in as many seconds and cheerfully walk the streets of our cities with the weapon at his fingertips. As we will see in Cleveland during the coming convention, and as we did see in Dallas when those police officers were slaughtered, where the wanna-be armed cowboys are lucky they weren’t fired on by the police in the confusion.
Kind of makes one yearn for a return of the Gipper.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)