Here’s the introduction and I would place it in the must read basket….
Before Robert Spitzer grew up to be an expert on American gun policy, he watched a lot of Westerns. He was raised on stories of an America built by rugged men with six-shooters on their hips … even though that image was mostly made up. Spitzer has written five books about gun policy in the U.S., and he says that in the actual Wild West, gun laws were strict.
“They didn’t want people walking around their new town with a gun strapped to their hip,” he said. “So you’d have to check your gun at the town hall or the sheriff’s office or the clerk’s office or someplace. I’m still drawn into those old stories, but that was not typical at all.”
Unfortunately, mass shootings have become all too typical. Recent tragedies like the Covenant School shooting in Tennessee, two separate shootings in Louisville, Kentucky, and the shooting at a birthday party in Dadeville, Alabama, have prompted fresh calls for gun reform, though it’s unclear how much will come of them.
But America’s gun policy history seems to be more important to many courts than the present. Last summer, the Supreme Court struck down a New York state concealed carry law because, in the view of the court’s majority, it went against the original intent of the Second Amendment. That ruling set a precedent that all gun laws should be judged against “historical tradition.” And in the year since that ruling was made, more than 100 state and federal gun laws have been challenged.
Courts have struck down limits on gun ownership for domestic abusers, accused felons, and young adults. They’ve overturned bans on guns with shaved-off serial numbers and guns made with 3D printers. All were overturned based on the notion that the U.S. of the 1700s didn’t have gun control.
But Spitzer says that actually, the opposite is true. “It’s difficult to think of any kind of gun law that you can think of today that didn’t exist in some form 150, 200, 300 years ago. In many respects, guns and weapons were more strictly regulated in our first 300 years of history than in the last 30 years.”
On Wednesday’s episode of What Next, I spoke with Spitzer about America’s real history with firearms and how it could change the gun laws of our present—and future. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Read the Interview At
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/gun-control-laws-bruen-us-history.html
