Handgun attitudes in the 50s

[monotonous_iterancy]

Here's a somewhat related question. Were there any negative attitudes, or at least ambivalence towards semi-autos? It seems to me like most of the examples I see from that time are revolvers. I get the impression that semis didn't really catch on until the mid 80s.

 

[DurangoKid]

Handgun bans in the 1950s? Where did that come from? The next thing you are going to say Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Lassie were not popular?? I lived in a state where it was legal to order handguns thru the U.S. Mail. That was post war America the country was awash in Lugers, Walthers, Nambus and the NRA sold1911 Colts for $18 dollars. The Anti-gun movement started in force after the JFK murders in the 1960s. The Liberal Democrats in the Senate led by Estes Kefaufer Of Tenn, and Thomas Dodds of Conn. in the late 1950s investigated the use of handguns by street gangs and did pass a federal law regarding automatic pocket knives.

 

[otasan56]

Well now that BHO is POTUS for 4 more years

With Hillary Clinton coming in 2016, there is not much hope for Glock owners. I had better start practicing carrying my S&W M629 revolver.

 

[Cosmoline]

Folks tend to view the past, esp. the 50's, through the lens of pop culture. The references to Beaver are a good example. The fact is concealed handguns were viewed by many, probably most, Americans as something for detectives and criminals. There really has been a major change for the better since then.

Handgun bans in the 1950s? Where did that come from?

Well CONCEALED handguns were banned almost everywhere at that time. And open carry was for the open range.

 

[huntsman]

Here's a somewhat related question. Were there any negative attitudes, or at least ambivalence towards semi-autos? It seems to me like most of the examples I see from that time are revolvers. I get the impression that semis didn't really catch on until the mid 80s.

I found this in my 1956 Gun Digest:
Handguns in America 1955-56
By Major J.S Hatcher

He (Hatcher) lists cartridges still being manufactured in the US even though the guns aren’t .25 .32 .380acp
“Because the American market is constantly being flooded with small European Murder guns
of these calibers. The reader may well ask why, if there is a demand for these little horrors, they aren’t still being manufactured in America.”

Hatcher went on to say he talked to the President of Colt in 1946 about restarting the small automatic gun lines

“but because of the war all tooling and fixtures were scrapped. The question was at that time up for consideration as whether or not to tool up for them again. He said that they realized a lot of them could be sold, but they frankly wondered if they served any useful purpose, and whether their production wouldn’t do the arms maker more moral harm than material good.”

“Police weapons, the target weapons, and the plinking type .22’s that are so much fun on camping trips, they felt added to the safety and security to society and the nation, and the pleasure of target shooting and outdoor sport; But the little Murder guns they felt they would prefer to have nothing to do with.”

And gun guys got pissed a boycotted old Bill because of his 10 round limit on mags and here was Colt deliberately withholding SD guns from the citizens of this country.

 

[rcmodel]

Were there any negative attitudes, or at least ambivalence towards semi-autos?
I get the impression that semis didn't really catch on until the mid 80s.

The ammo they shot.
Prior to 1970 semi-auto ammo came in only two types.

Very light SWC target loads & 230 grain FMJ-RN in .45 ACP.
And only one or two weights of FMJ-RN in everything else.

The JHP pistol bullet as we know it today wasn't invented until the late 1960's, and it was many years later until you could buy a pistol from all manufactures that would reliably feed them.

Revolvers like the .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum had long had jacketed soft-point and Semi-Wadcutter hollow point bullets available for them.

rc

 

[Midwest]

How many states had CCW laws on the books back in the 50s? Any?

Conceal Carry (for anyone) I believe that there were two states in the 1950's...

I believe shall issue conceal carry was Washington State, and Vermont which didn't require a permit for conceal carry.

There were states that had may issue CCW permits, and a number of states had (and still today) allow for open carry without a permit.

There was even a post that I read that in some rural areas of New Jersey, people used to open carry. But I think that ended with their 1966 ID card law....

.

 

[buckhorn_cortez]

Hell, McCarthy went around imprisoning people who were seen as a threat to the government and most people didn't mind at all.

No. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) could not imprison people. They could identify perceived threats to the United States for later prosecution. McCarthy was the Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the early 1950's.

The Committee actually goes back to the 1930's as the Fish Committee and the McCormack-Dickstein Committee used to investigate subversive threats to US security. HUAC existed until 1975 when its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.

Prosecutions of people identified through HUAC investigations were carried out by the Justice Department in the 1950's using a variety of laws, most notably using the Smith Act passed in 1940. Many of the people convicted under the Smith Act had their sentences reversed in 1957 when the Supreme Court ruled the Smith Act as unconstitutional.

But - back to the 1950's - You could order a gun and have it delivered via the US Postal Service to your house....the neighbor in back of us used to do that all the time.

 

[Billy Shears]

There wasn't much in the way of handgun control in the 50's.

Depends where you lived. New York had the Sullivan Act going all the way back to 1911, requiring licenses for New Yorkers to possess firearms small enough to be concealed. And of course, there were various laws in the Reconstruction-era south, which were designed to keep guns out of the hands of blacks (the Civil Rights Act of 1866 overrode many of those). The 1934 NFA, of course, enacted restrictions on weapons that were previously freely available for purchase.

 

[Jim K]

The fact that McCarthy was an idiot should not obscure the fact that there was a deep penetration of the U.S. government by Soviet agents in the wartime and post-war era. Of course, that was Joe McCarthy, the right-wing idiot, not to be confused with Gene McCarthy, the left-wing idiot.

As for gun control, the peak of gun ban insanity was probably in 1963-1968, after the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. The NRA was openly accused of killing JFK and there were calls for a total ban on private guns. Teddy Kennedy, when someone mentioned the Second Amendment, reportedly replied, "To hell with the Constitution, nobody gives a damn about that piece of eighteenth century toilet paper."

There were serious calls for the summary executions of NRA members and of anyone who owned a gun or who had ever owned a gun!

The Army was ordered to stop the sale of M1903A4 rifles with scopes and mounts and also to scrap plans for sale of semi-auto M14 rifles through the DCM.

The Washington Post ran 220 continuous days of anti-gun editorials, full of the worst invective and wild accusations against the NRA, gun companies, gun dealers, gun owners, etc.

Even with all that, the Gun Control Act of 1968 would probably not have passed if it had not been for the riots that followed the King assassination. The white Congress looked out from Capitol Hill at a burning city and thought about guns in black hands - then they passed a law, blatantly racist, to make sure "those people" didn't get guns. That was the same reason for the late D.C. law and similar laws in Chicago and elsewhere. (An assistant Treasury secretary admitted that much depended on gun dealers for the law to be effective, but assured key Senators and Representatives that there was zero chance the then-ATTD would ever allow a black man to get a dealer's license!)

It was a bad, bad time. And the anti's will never give up. I believe the extremists will do anything, anything, to further their goal of a total ban on private firearms ownership. Needless to say, they believe that they will control the government's guns and will be able to use them against anyone who does not adhere to their way of thinking.

Jim

 

[Hatchett]

The anti gun folks lost and any of them of any relevance knows it. We have about as much to worry about from them as from soviet infiltrators today.

 

[Slamfire]

They also had comic book bans http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6543/ and if you wanted to discredit someone you called them a Communist.

It is an interesting concept that the ruling class stays in power by scapegoating. By focusing society’s attention on scapegoats they divert attention from the problems they create .

However, the best thing for Gun Owners was voting out of Clinton’s Democratic Congress back in the 90’s. The gun banner's butts still hurt from that.

Does not mean they won’t be back….

 

[Hatchett]

The fact is that in the current cultural climate a politician loses more than he gains by coming out against gun owners, and the one thing our congress has proven itself good at of late is obstructing change. When a gun tragedy occurs, gun sales go UP and people will blame anything they can except guns. It will take a dramatic shift in cultural thinking before any of this changes. As this thread shows, that tends to take about fifty years, give or take.

 

[Robert]

This one has wandered around long enough, and throw in politics and we are done.