Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Why is it that public safety was more in so many white conservative minds back then than it is in so many of those heads today?

Did the Wild West Have More Gun Control Than We Do Today? .. to the end ..

Although some in the gun community insist that more guns equals less crime, in the Wild West they discovered that gun control can work. Gun violence in these towns was far more rare than we commonly imagine. Historians who've studied the numbers have determined that frontier towns averaged less than two murders a year. Granted, the population of these towns was small. Nevertheless, these were not places where duels at high noon were commonplace. In fact, they almost never occurred.

Why is our image of the Wild West so wrong? Largely for the same reason these towns adopted gun control laws in the first place: economic development. Residents wanted limits on guns in public because they wanted to attract businesspeople and civilized folk. What prospective storeowner was going to move to Deadwood if he was likely to be robbed when he brought his daily earnings to the bank?

Once the frontier was closed, those same towns glorified a supposedly violent past in order to attract tourists and the businesses to serve them. Gunfights were extremely rare in frontier towns, but these days you can see a reenactment of the one at the OK Corral several times a day. Don't forget to buy a souvenir!

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?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/did-the-wild-west-have-mo_b_956035.html

In any gun debate this point should not be ignored either.

in the '20s and 30's the 2nd Amendment was not even part of the gun debate.
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