Brief history of gun control
This honored tradition went completely unchallenged until the 1900s. Then New York passed the Sullivan Act in 1911, one of the first gun control laws. This law required that firearms small enough to be concealed on a person be registered. This state law became a test measure for future gun control laws.
IIRC (and there is no guarantee I do) the first gun control law in this country was passed in Tennessee to disarm blacks and poor. The law basically said the only handgun allowed was some expensive Colt and, of course, poor folks couldn’t afford that one handgun.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:37 am
You are correct. The South’s attempted oppression and disarmament of the newly freed black population was one of the main motivations for the 14th amendment. This situation predates the early 20th century NYC concern over Italian immigrants.
June 8th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
I always thought it was Texas’s 1865-6? Reconstruction law to disarm holdover Confederates.
June 8th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Actually, you can go back further, to the Kansas territory in the 1850s. The pro-slavery territorial legislature passed a law to disarm their free soil opponents.
I saw it on Volokh a few weeks back, but I can’t find the link.
June 8th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Found it: it’s actually written by Kopel.
Here’s the link (from my post linking to it)
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_05_20-2007_05_26.shtml#1179861522
You’ll have to scroll down quite a ways-the link goes to the archives for the week, and Volokh’s Conspirators are quite prolific. It was posted on 22 May.