So, clearly, gun ownership was not a virtue in Tombstone. Or Dodge City. Or Wichita. Or Deadwood.
Pretty soon, what the state or federal law is becomes irrelevant. Local communities saw that guns were destroying their peaceful towns, so they banned them. Are you saying local gun control is OK?
No, I am saying that you are drawing an unwarranted conclusion from there being some local gun control in the 19th century. This statement
gives the impression that you believe there was as much or more gun control nationwide then as opposed to now.
I presume that by mass shooting you mean the current definition of four or more people shot (not necessarily killed). AFAIK, those kind of statistics aren’t available for that far back; doubtless numerous incidents occurred that never were noted beyond a mention in a local newspaper. Compiling comprehensive nationwide statistics for that era would be a worthwhile but daunting task. Also, adjust for population size: US population 1890 ~63,000,000.
Overall gun violence rates are down, but there’s been a sharp spike in mass shootings since Columbine; my guess is that a combination of shooter video games and media coverage has turned gun massacres into a fad. The moral decay of our society is hardly the guns’ fault.
I do believe that. Whether it was local control, state control or federal control is irrelevant.
IMHO, the main reason guns are regarded differently today is a shift in social viewpoint: violence and murder were once regarded as the moral failing of the persons committing them. We are much more likely today to view social problems statistically, in terms of environmental factors affecting people en masse. Yet all other factors affecting peoples’ behavior such as video, music and games glorifying violence, or the loosening of responsibility or discipline, never get blamed for gun violence. Instead it’s put on the guns themselves and “gun culture”, as if owning guns somehow inures people to violence or inspires them to commit assault and murder- without ever asking why that should be true now when it wasn’t in the past. Excepting only the far, far end of the bell curve consisting of the truly paranoid and sociopathic, owning a gun per se does not inspire violent thoughts.
Apparently the gun control advocates’ answer to our violence problem is not teaching responsibility, discipline or empathy for others, but a faux-pacifist squeamishness: if we raise our children to be afraid of and repelled by guns, guns won’t be used and will vanish from society. Nice plan, except that by definition the people committing gun crimes are those that our society’s acculturation process has failed. Also, just where is our warrior caste of soldiers and police supposed to come from- are they going to be cloned in vats?
Then I expect you should be able to demonstrate that by showing a fairly extensive ist of cites. What was the gun control situation in 19th century Pennsylvania for example?
I’m sure you think that is a gotcha question that will keep me busy on Google for most of the week. You fail to understand that gun control and the Second Amendment are among the most researched laws in the history of America. For instance,the Constitution of Pennsylvania at that time was quite specific about individual gun rights vs. the duty of the state to control guns in the defense of the general public:
No, I am not playing gotcha. I am asking you to provide facts to back up your assertion, no more. The 19th century US was already a big place with a lot of people. You’ve named half a dozen localities that had gun laws and generalized from that to the whole US has similar laws. Incidentally, I’ve lived in PA most of my life and never been called upon to take any oath of allegiance. Was that a thing in the 19th century? Where and when did one swear such an oath?
Here’sanother good one:
I was citing the law in the 19th century, so I am not surpised you haven’t run into it lately. As to where and when such an oath was required, I have no idea. Fortunately, that is irrelevant to my cite in the debate.
The correlation coefficient is 0.1. Is that what you would call a strong correlation?
Are mass shootings the barometer for gun violence?
I am pretty sure we have lower levels of gun violence than we have had in the past and I don’t think that we have ever had much lower gun murder rates.
Of course we had less gun control than we do now. You used to be able to buy a gun in a hardware store on a cash and carry basis.
Heck you could mail order them from catalogs.
I think you are pretty clearly wrong.
You’re really undermining the crredibility of your own argument when you say things like this. There is no doubt that there is more gun control today than there has been in the past. Whatever state and local laws there may have been in the past, states and localities also have today. And we have significantly more federal regulation.
What correlation coefficient? In what study? Be specific about what you’re referring to.