illinoisburt
Member
The OP's question in some ways gets to the heart of the text-and-tradition test set up by the Bruen decision. Most all the restrictions on arms are a 20th century construct. No one in America would have given a second thought about if personal guns were legal to acquire and keep before then. Big city laws like the Sullivan act came about after the turn of the century with the changing landscape and modernization of the country.
Cannons, warships, explosives, rifles, machine guns, handguns were all owned and used by private citizens at one time. Anyone who wanted them and could come up with the money could do so without any by-you-leave from the federal government pre-1934. It was understood that all manner of weapons were freely traded without constitutional impediment, hence the reason when 1934 came about it was a taxing scheme. (A giant raft of other federal laws came into being around this time greatly expanding government power where it very much didn't exist previously. People were distracted with a depression and lots of other problems so ceding ground wasn't much concern to most citizenry but it was awful important to do something about artillery pieces and machine guns after the Bonus Army affair in '32.)
Federal laws were few and far between with 1934 and 1968 as the big ones. These took a off with slews of amendments and adjustments going forward. There wasn't much doubt what legislators and agitators wanted: a complete bans on handguns and relegating long guns to hunting camps and sporting ranges. This was supposed to be a brave new world and putting the archaic past behind us as a society. Given the antiwar sentiment and fear of inner city crime of the 60s-70s-80s-90s they had a pretty good track record of pushing and passing their agenda. It likely would have continued if not for the Gulf war and subsequent terror attacks which changed a lot of public opinion about our military and people's inherit rights to self protection.
I would keep in mind this was not a case of the government establishing some new threshold for what qualified as constitutional rights in the past. Instead at each step the story was always the same -- bad people have some type of bad item already freely available to them, so we the good people need to be responsible and give up the right to the bad item so we can all be safer from the bad people.
Cannons, warships, explosives, rifles, machine guns, handguns were all owned and used by private citizens at one time. Anyone who wanted them and could come up with the money could do so without any by-you-leave from the federal government pre-1934. It was understood that all manner of weapons were freely traded without constitutional impediment, hence the reason when 1934 came about it was a taxing scheme. (A giant raft of other federal laws came into being around this time greatly expanding government power where it very much didn't exist previously. People were distracted with a depression and lots of other problems so ceding ground wasn't much concern to most citizenry but it was awful important to do something about artillery pieces and machine guns after the Bonus Army affair in '32.)
Federal laws were few and far between with 1934 and 1968 as the big ones. These took a off with slews of amendments and adjustments going forward. There wasn't much doubt what legislators and agitators wanted: a complete bans on handguns and relegating long guns to hunting camps and sporting ranges. This was supposed to be a brave new world and putting the archaic past behind us as a society. Given the antiwar sentiment and fear of inner city crime of the 60s-70s-80s-90s they had a pretty good track record of pushing and passing their agenda. It likely would have continued if not for the Gulf war and subsequent terror attacks which changed a lot of public opinion about our military and people's inherit rights to self protection.
I would keep in mind this was not a case of the government establishing some new threshold for what qualified as constitutional rights in the past. Instead at each step the story was always the same -- bad people have some type of bad item already freely available to them, so we the good people need to be responsible and give up the right to the bad item so we can all be safer from the bad people.
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