There were some obvious advantages to the gun check policies of the Old West. But before we discuss them, we have to set the scene. White settlers needed guns for hunting and self-protection against Native Americans, bears and cougars, and other settlers. Every family would be expected to have at least one gun, and probably several. This was true also, for the cowboys who moved cattle from Texas up into Kansas.
These cowboy towns in Kansas, like Abilene, Dodge City and Ellsworth are part of Old West lore. But they required strangers entering town to drop their guns off at the sheriff’s office. They would receive a token, like with modern day coat checks, and they would use the token to retrieve their firearms when they left town. This arrangement usually applied to knives as well.
These policies did face occasional resistance and there are famous examples of sheriffs being killed why trying to enforce them. The famous shootout at the OK corral in Tombstone, Arizona involved the sheriffs killing folks who had refused to turn in their guns. But, on the whole, the system worked pretty well to hold down the homicide rate.
When in town, people didn’t need to hunt or worry about bears and Native Americans too much, and as long as everyone else was disarmed, they didn’t need to worry other settlers. For the sheriffs, the policy gave them an opportunity to meet everyone new to town, and also to be apprised of when they departed. If they saw a stranger in town, they could assume they were armed and make them comply with the policy.
Townsfolk who elected these sheriffs enjoyed the law and order and personal security which also made the towns attractive and allowed them to grow. Towns that lacked these restrictions had higher homicide rates and gained correspondingly bad reputations.
Nonetheless, with an assist from Hollywood and these towns’ efforts to trade on their “lawless” past for tourism dollars, an image of the Old West has been established that is wilder than it truly is was, at least with respect to firearms.
I mention this because the Texas legislature is suffering from a severe allergy to all efforts at gun control. As the Washington Post reports:
Texas lawmakers handed a series of victories to gun rights advocates in the recently wrapped legislative session, making it easier to possess certain firearms while banning “red flag” laws that allow court authorities to temporarily remove guns from people who might be a danger to themselves or others.
Specifically, if Texas towns try to take a gun away from a psychotic or suicidal person, they can now be prosecuted. It’s also legal now to saw off a shotgun to make it easier to conceal and more suitable for killing multiple people at once. These are not a policies the Earps would have endorsed in Dodge City or Tombstone, at all. They also passed bills “to end locally run gun buyback programs and allow Texas to recognize handgun licenses from other states.”
To see how extreme the Texas Republicans are, let’s look at the bills they introduced but failed to pass. There was “a bill that would have lowered the age to carry a handgun to 18; one that would have allowed convicted felons to possess firearms; and one that would have loosened restrictions on guns in certain locations, like hospitals and large events.”
I can’t see a 19th-Century sheriff in Abilene thinking it was good idea to allow guns into large events, or to let heavily armed known felons run loose in town.
These ideas are supposed to be rooted in preserving or restoring the rights Americans used to enjoy in olden days, but the Old West did not allow concealed carry or believe the Second Amendment prevented them from making people check their guns at the sheriff’s office. In general, they believed guns were for things you do outside of town. They wouldn’t think of confiscating someone’s firearms permanently because people needed them to survive, but they had no problem regulating where they could be brandished.
Texas should honor its true history rather than this fake one. It would save a lot of lives, as the Old West sheriffs well understood.
