When I was a kid, guns were sold at Wards, Sears, Western Auto, J.C.Penny's who had their own housebrands (easily recognized as being made by Marlin, Winchester, Savage, FN, etc.). When Dad and I went to the old homeplace on the mountain to target practice, you could count on practically every general store and gas station to be stocked with at least .22LR and 12ga, maybe .410 and .30-30 stocked because they were everyday consumer goods as much as sugar, flour and motor oil.
I was 20 when the 1968 Gun Control Act was passed. I remember the constant anti-gun press and political drumbeat demonizing and marginalizing gun owners, and attacks on the NRA that were just a constant stream of lies. I remember being restricted to buying ammo only at dealers with FFLs and having to present drivers license ID and have every box by make, caliber and quantity recorded in a bound book with my name, addresss, drivers license number, DOB. Even ATF admitted those records never benefited any criminal prosecution. And gradually, as restrictions piled on, guns were removed from the mainstream--Sears, Wards, J.C. Penneys, Western Auto dropped guns and ammo, and locally sales moved to dedicated gun shops, often "cop shops" who also were Class III. Today WalMart is the only general merchandise store with a sporting goods department that sales guns and ammo, and the anti-gunners are going after WalMart.
Was the gun world less organized, more compliant back then?
Yes.
But as the hate speech piled on from the Left (
The Nation,
The New Republic) and from Democrats (Metzenbaum, Dodd), I became radicalized. Authority did not trust me, and I learned not to trust authority. I realized tho' I was not alone.
Senator Tydings ordered the FBI to investigate the NRA as an unregistered lobby rather than an educational association, because of NRA testimony against a national gun registry. So the NRA decided what the heck and informed the FBI that NRA was registering as a lobby, cutting short the FBI investigation, and formed what became the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA), and went full tilt boogie against gun control.
Gun control excess organized resistence to gun control, awakened millions of sleeping giants, and filled them with resolve. We were unorganized, compliant then, but never again.