The Mild, Mild West

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/05/1304765/-The-Mild-Mild-West?detail=email

Firearms, both long guns and handguns, were indeed ubiquitous in the plains and high country of western America in the 19th century, and into the 20th. Men and women journeying there would have been foolish not to rely on the security of a steel companion, what with (rather understandably) angry natives and deadly predators, particularly the newly-arrived, pale, two-legged sort.

However, in town, attitudes toward possession and use of guns was quite different, indeed often hostile.

This pleasant burg is Dodge City, Kansas, circa 1878, perhaps the wildest cow town where ever trail met rail. The sign, prominently displayed on the main street, read (above the advertisement for bitters), "The Carrying of Firearms Strictly Prohibited." In fact, when Dodge got itself up a municipal government, it's very first law was a gun control ordinance.

A hand riding into Wichita, another notorious trail-end town, would have been met with a similar announcement in 1873, demanding, "Leave Your Revolvers At Police Headquarters, and Get a Check." Just like your hat and coat in a swanky Broadway nightclub of another era.

Other towns of similar, violent repute had similar restrictions. Here are the laws that Mssrs. Earp and Doc Holliday were enforcing on the open-carry-happy Clantons in a little place called Tombstone:

Ordinance No.9:

"To Provide against Carrying of Deadly Weapons" (effective April 19, 1881).

Section 1. It is hereby declared unlawful to carry in the hand or upon the person or otherwise any deadly weapon within the limits of said city of Tombstone, without first obtaining a permit in writing.

Section 2: This prohibition does not extend to persons immediately leaving or entering the city, who, with good faith, and within reasonable time are proceeding to deposit, or take from the place of deposit such deadly weapon.

Section 3: All fire-arms of every description, and bowie knives and dirks, are included within the prohibition of this ordinance.

 Ordinance No.7, Section 1 (effective April 12, 1881):

It shall be the duty of all policemen to arrest all parties found in the public streets within the city limits, engaged in brawling, quarreling, etc., and all persons who be shall found in any disorderly act whereby a breach of the peace might be occasioned.

so somewhere between the revolution and the encroaching and stealing of land in the west guns and the 2nd amendment where in the toilet.  or was it that they too went to far trying to rewrite in intent the 2nd amendment and realized after so many boot hill fillings that to have guns as a stock part of their dressing like a side mirror to a car was both foolish and finitely deadly, how many chapters in history where guns permeating the culture came to a point where they had to regulate the roaring 20's, now how many more decades will the cycle continue until there's no one left to shoot or pull a trigger???