cultural carry

I grew up where if we had a problem, we had to drive 20 miles to the nearest phone. Then we had to give very detailed directions to the S.O. They had no idea how to find the ranch house let alone any problems off a county road.
We had to take care of things ourselves until the "law" arrived.
Most of the men I grew up around were Veterans and had a gun of some kind within reach.

I followed the pattern and then became a LEO. As a result, I've carried a gun almost every day for the last 60 years.

kBob said:

With no standards for issue the Sheriff got to decide if he liked your skin color, hair style or political affiliation if he wanted to in deciding who legally carried.

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Prior to shall issue, Georgia was very similar. There were fee limits, and a standardized background check. However, the permits did (and still do) go through the probate judge in your county of residence. The law now says the probate judge shall issue the permit if your background check is clear from certain things. Prior to that the law said something to the extent that probate judge may issue the permit if you passed the background check and the judge determined / believed you to be "of good moral character". The shall issue amending to the legislation also set in place time limits for the probate courts to issue the permits so that they couldn't put you into an indefinite investigative status.

kBob writes:

...in Florida each county Sheriff had the ability to grant permits to Carry concealed and could charge up to $500 per year to do so.

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In my home county of Palm Beach, it was the county commission that held authority over this matter. They ran a "may-issue" process, with a requirement the applicant show "due cause", and used examples of people who had documented viable threats against them, or couriers of valuables and such. Probably even worse at the time than dealing with someone who was at least a lawman. The county did indeed impose a three-day wait on handgun purchases (that was waived if one showed evidence of already owning a handgun, such as a prior purchase at the same FFL, or was trading one in.)

Another thing back then was each county's permit was not backed by the state to be valid in any other county. The onus was on the permit-holder to see which other counties into which he might travel honored his permit.

Some counties had no provision for concealed-carry at all. There may have even been some that allowed it without requiring a permit at all.

I got my badge pinned on the same year the CWFL law was placed into effect, so I never went for the license back then (I also turned 21 that year, so I wouldn't have even been eligible under the county's system prior, anyway.) Over the next several years, I don't think I ever met another cop who opposed lawful concealed carry by private citizens.

entropy said:

Does this awkwardly worded sentence mean "if constitutional carry should pass"? Don't worry, it won't, nor should it.

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Vermont and New Hampshire both have Constitutional Carry. Vermont has the second-lowest incidence of violent crime in the nation, New Hampshire the third-lowest.

telomerase said:

Vermont and New Hampshire both have Constitutional Carry. Vermont has the second-lowest incidence of violent crime in the nation, New Hampshire the third-lowest.

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And that's precisely where Constitutional Carry should be at, the State level, not the Federal.

You started off asking if there was evidence of the gun mfgr'rs making firearms for civilian carry. Then the thread went all philosophical on can we / can't we, when, where, how....

Back to your original question / statement...what would you liked to have seen in the firearms available then (mid to late 20th centuary) that the "cop and military" didn't have?

Granted, we have now down sized versions of the cop and mil guns, and I won't even go into the hand cannons because they began as wildcats.

Plenty of vintage advertising exists proving that both Colt and S&W marketed firearms popular with civilians, from vest pocket..25 acps and sportsman's .22lr revolvers and semi automatics on up through the S&W Registered Magnums which were very popular with civilians who shared the same real estate as dangerous game. Colt even kept the SAA in production long after it was obsolete by the military, all because of civilian demand. There were snub nose model Colts marketed as Banker's and Shop Keeper's Specials specifically for businessmen, Here are some examples---

Sistema1927 said:

When I attended my 1st CCW class the instructor introduced himself and then said "I have been carrying, legally and illegally, for XX years." Most of us nodded knowingly in agreement with him.

I turned 21 in 1977, and except for the time I served in uniform I have carried consistently. Some of these were pretty sketchy weapons, and chosen for deep concealment, but I was armed. I also knew that many of my otherwise law abiding associates were also carrying.

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Yep, what you wrote above matched both my father and myself.

Grew up in So. California and few people were able to get a permit back then in the 70's, 80's and 90's. I don't know about now, but I imagine that it's much the same.

While my father was a big fan of Swenson 1911's and S&W 19's and 29's, the two handguns that I remember him actually carrying or having in the car were a S&W Chief's Special .38 and an AMT .380 ACP. Mostly it was the .38 Spl for normal carry and almost always in the car and the .380 for bike rides.



If he were arrested and the pistol confiscated it was a misdemeanor arrest and he wasn't out as much money. I remember his saying as much.

When I got older and still lived in Los Angeles I bought a S&W Model 10 for a little over $100 and a CZ-27 for about the same price and kept those around for the same purpose. At least I was armed with something.

A few of his friends carried, but only one of my friends made it a regular practice.

John Joseph said:

Here are some examples---
View attachment 805016

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Love the 14 round Colt.

Great posters J.J

sistema1927 wrote:
When I attended my 1st CCW class the instructor introduced himself and then said "I have been carrying, legally and illegally, for XX years."

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My grandmother, who died in 1975, carried an S&W 38 Special pistol in her purse at least as long as I knew who she was. Her attitude was, "Who searches a 60-something Caucasian woman's purse?" At the time, she was right.

Also, I should mention that she was of mixed race, but easily "passed" for "White" in the segregated South. And, as she said, despite increasingly frequent traffic stops as her (at the time undiagnosed) cancer made her driving more erratic, no police officer ever asked to look in her purse.

In 1926, my grandfather was the police chief's barber.
The Chief gave my grandfather a letter permitting him to carry it on a motor trip back east.
Presumably other LEO's in other jurisdictions would respect it.

I grew up in northwest Florida in the 50's and 60's, from the time I was 16 I always had a shotgun or 22 rifle with me anywhere I drove, got stopped occasionally, never a problem with local, county or state LE. Had 2 uncles and 2 cousins that served in WW2 and always carried in Louisiana after the war, mostly with the pistols they brought back from the war: 1911, Steyr 380, Walther P38, and Walther PPK. I actually started carrying a pistol at 18, it was a B/P Howdah style that fit into a special pouch on my motorcycle, I used to keep the caps in an aspirin tin in my pocket, was stopped a few times by local LE thinking I had a sawed off shotgun, they never could get the thing to break open and even tried to fire it into the air a few times, even though it was always loaded, the caps were kept separate. As far as I know, my cousins and uncles never got a CCW, I did many yrs later after returning to Florida after yrs over seas in the USAF.

robhof said:

I actually started carrying a pistol at 18, it was a B/P Howdah style that fit into a special pouch on my motorcycle, I used to keep the caps in an aspirin tin in my pocket, was stopped a few times by local LE thinking I had a sawed off shotgun, they never could get the thing to break open and even tried to fire it into the air a few times, even though it was always loaded, the caps were kept separate. As far as I know, my cousins and uncles never got a CCW, I did many yrs later after returning to Florida after yrs over seas in the USAF.

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lolololol

when someone very close to me was visiting miami regularly in the mid 1980s he carried a 38 under his car seat. what the heck was a ccw permit?

It bears mentioning that the Bernhard Goetz(spelling?) Incident has probably had a larger influence on ccw laws than anything else in the last 50 years. As a teenager at that time I remember being horrified that the law was set to punish a citizen in such a way for simply protecting himself. Im sure millions of Americans felt the same way, regardless of age.

Pure2nd said:

It bears mentioning that the Bernhard Goetz(spelling?) Incident has probably had a larger influence on ccw laws than anything else in the last 50 years. As a teenager at that time I remember being horrified that the law was set to punish a citizen in such a way for simply protecting himself. Im sure millions of Americans felt the same way, regardless of age.

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Couldn’t agree more. That he did protect himself with a snub nose revolver has done much to the debate of auto vs revo too, I would imagine.

Browning said:

Yep, what you wrote above matched both my father and myself.

Grew up in So. California and few people were able to get a permit back then in the 70's, 80's and 90's. I don't know about now, but I imagine that it's much the same.

While my father was a big fan of Swenson 1911's and S&W 19's and 29's, the two handguns that I remember him actually carrying or having in the car were a S&W Chief's Special .38 and an AMT .380 ACP. Mostly it was the .38 Spl for normal carry and almost always in the car and the .380 for bike rides.

View attachment 805050

If he were arrested and the pistol confiscated it was a misdemeanor arrest and he wasn't out as much money. I remember his saying as much.

When I got older and still lived in Los Angeles I bought a S&W Model 10 for a little over $100 and a CZ-27 for about the same price and kept those around for the same purpose. At least I was armed with something.

A few of his friends carried, but only one of my friends made it a regular practice.

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Great story. I’m also of the opinion that today, if one does chose to CCW, you run the serious risk of having your weapon confiscated and will not likely see it again, if an incident happens where one actually uses it. My local LEOs refer to these as “throw away pieces.”

When I was growing up in the fifties, there was no such thing as a CCW permit. They didn't exist. Concealed carry was restricted to sworn officers. (Of course the "well connected" got sworn in by the sheriff.)

CCW was punished by six months in jail

Today many states have permitless CCW. We've made tremendous progress in this area.

Unlicensed concealed carry has always been very popular with criminals. It's even in our legends and lore. Big Bad Leroy Brown carried a .32 gun in his pocket for fun, and a razor in his shoe. Criminals are a very small percentage of the general population but get a lot of public attention.

As the law-abiding public grew more weary of violent crime, we started carrying ourselves.

I carried in my truck under the old Arkansas Journey law! Our Sheriff said leaving your property was being on a Journey , others said you had to be out of your County to be on a Journey!

Anchorite said:

Great story. I’m also of the opinion that today, if one does chose to CCW, you run the serious risk of having your weapon confiscated and will not likely see it again, if an incident happens where one actually uses it. My local LEOs refer to these as “throw away pieces.”

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Yeah, that's basically what they were. Throw away pieces.

Just so long as they work and are accurate and they don't cost too much to replace those are good pieces to use.

Probably why people use tons of Ruger LCP's, S&W Shields and Glocks today.

labnoti said:

Although I lived longer in the 20th century than I have in this one, I don't have a perfect recollection of everything about that century and since a good portion of it consisted of my childhood, I wasn't particularly concerned with this issue throughout my time in it. My sensibilities which are liberal in the true sense of liberality with respect to liberty and individual freedoms cause me to want to believe that a great portion of my fellow Americans indulged routinely in this freedom of ours. On the other hand, there's disturbing evidence that carry was irregular, relegated to certain isolated places and elsewhere stigmatic. One of the evidences of this in the manufacture and marketing of handguns throughout the 20th century. Colt and Smith & Wesson made "cop" guns, but what gun was marketing to private citizens and residents that wasn't a "hunting" gun or a competition pistol? Of course we cannot deny the generous portion of the market for "Saturday night specials," but wasn't that just the sort of unseemliness that carried with it a social stigma? There seems to be scant evidence the manufacturers were making an effort to address a demand to arm a big portion of the citizenry with firearms for concealed carry. Or were they doing this with all the Colt Troopers and Model 19's they were making for cops and citizens alike? Why does it seem virtually all the design influence was cop-influence or from the Army?

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We will never know how widespread CCW was "back in the day". No one kept track and there was no one to keep track. (Which when you think about it was a good thing.) In the 1890s and earlier the banning of open carry, usually in urban areas, became more common. Texas passed such a law statewide in the early 1890s IIRC. But in many states there were no laws, or few laws, regarding concealed carry.

From the early days of fire arms in the U.S. and handgun manufacture small guns which could be carried in a pocket or small holster were popular. The majority of S&Ws early handguns were of this type leading up to the turn of the century.

Colt produced the M1903 and M1908 Pocket Hammerless guns in .32 acp and .380 acp respectively. Also in 1908 the Vest pocket 1908 in 25 acp. I could go on but here...http://www.coltautos.com/

Internationally small vest pocket and pocket semis were made all over Europe and sold in the U.S. They were widespread and popular. So much so that U.S. gun manufacturers lobbied for protectionist measures to limit their sale in the U.S. The 1968 GCA was one result which banned the sale of small semis. (The Walther PPK was banned as it was not tall enough. So Walther introduced the PPK/S).

The biggest boon to concealed carry was the passage of the assault weapons ban which limited pistol magazine capacity to 10 rounds. This created a whole market for compact and sub-compact handguns and thus guns more practical for CCW than full size service weapons.

The other boon to CCW was the repeated panic buying during the Obama years.

The ups and downs of crime stats have little to do directly with gun sales. The political campaigns launched around them do effect sales, meaning that candidates for office run to ban guns and "gun violence" or run campaigning that citizens arm themselves against "rising waves" of crime that threaten to engulf civilization, etc., etc.

tipoc

It does seem that there is a greater mainstream “acceptance” of carry, open or concealed, than in the past few years. Crime stats don’t seem to affect the issue either. We certainly don’t see stories on the evening news unless it’s a questionable shooting. It will be interesting to see if/how and gun control issues take shape ahead of the 2020 election cycle.

I see a double standard.
Carry permits, open carry, free carry seem to be increasing. A private citizen with a pistol seems reasonable to many.
The repression and scare stories are directed at the machinery. Which see the Washington redefinition of "assault weapon" and assorted magazine capacity restrictions.