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Old November 15, 2011, 02:52 AM   #24
Frank Ettin
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Join Date: November 23, 2005
Location: California - San Francisco
Posts: 9,471
Quote:
Originally Posted by secret_agent_man
...Gun regulation in the interest of true public safety seems to have gained traction as America changed from a rural society to an urbanized one after WWII and the citizens' familiarity with firearms began to diminish....
Nope. If Cockrum doesn't do it, Adam Winkler in Gun Fight goes into some detail about various public safety gun control laws common here the lat 18th through early 19th centuries. For example, Winkler notes (Winkler, Adam (2011-09-12). Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America (p. 117). Norton. Kindle Edition.):
Quote:
...When public safety demanded it, the founding fathers were willing to go even further. In Boston, city leaders determined that the combustibility of gunpowder posed such a danger that all loaded firearms had to be kept out of buildings. A law from 1783 imposed a fine on “any person” who “shall take into any dwelling-house, stable, barn, out-house, ware-house, store, shop, or other building, within the town of Boston, any . . . fire-arm, loaded with, or having gun-powder.” A second provision of the law effectively prohibited keeping a loaded firearm even in one’s own home: “all . . . fire-arms . . . of any kind, that shall be found in any dwelling-house . . . or other building, charged with, or having in them any gun-powder, shall be liable to be seized” and forfeited. Given how time-consuming the loading of a gun was in those days, these two provisions imposed a significant burden on one’s ability to have a functional firearm available for self-defense in the home. Yet there is no record of anyone’s complaining that this law infringed the people’s right to keep and bear arms. Even though the inspiration for this law was prevention of fires, not, say, protecting children from accidental shootings, the lesson remains the same: pressing safety concerns led Bostonians to effectively ban loaded weapons from any building in the city....
And as Winkler later adds (Winkler, Adam (2011-09-12). Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America (p. 117). Norton. Kindle Edition):
Quote:
...The individual-rights literature that arose in the wake of Don Kates’s article featured countless confident claims that gun control was a modern, twentieth-century invention. The facts suggest otherwise. The founding fathers had numerous gun control laws that responded to the public safety needs of their era. While our own public safety needs are different and require different responses, the basic idea that gun possession must be balanced with gun safety laws was one that the founders endorsed....
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