David Yamane has a bunch of great quotes from an older work discussing the history of guns and gun control in America.
Seeing how the arguments pro and con change so little over the years had me googling up H.L. Mencken's 1925 vintage classic in response to a proposed national ban on handguns, titled "The Uplifters Try It Again":
"The new law that it advocated, indeed, is one of the most absurd specimens of jackass legislation ever heard of, even in this paradise of legislative donkeyism. Its single and sole effect would be to exaggerate enormously all of the evils it proposes to put down. It would not take pistols out of the hands of rogues and fools; it would simply take them out of the hands of honest men. The gunman today has great advantages everywhere. He has artillery in his pocket, and he may assume that, in the large cities, at least two-thirds of his prospective victims are unarmed. But if the Nation’s proposed law (or amendment) were passed and enforced, he could assume safely that all of them were unarmed."I recommend reading the entirety of the Mencken essay, as it's Henry Louis in top form.
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| Apparently America in the 1920s faced a scourge of revolvers. Here are some of them. |
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