Yippy Ki Whatever
We have historical proof that gun control laws work
When I was a kid, circa the 1960s, everything I believed to be true, everything I held to be good, righteous and noble, I learned not from the nuns at Saturday morning catechism, but from television westerns…“Gunsmoke, Have Gun-Will Travel, The Lone Ranger, Rin-Tin-Tin, Rawhide, and my favorite, The Rifleman”.
Matt Dillon, Paladin, Rowdy Yates, a dog, and Lucas McCain, these were my heroes. Their television lives were the infallible, inerrant dictums that shaped my young psyche. Other than the dog, Rin-Tin-Tin, because dogs are by nature the most pure of heart creatures ever spoken into existence, all my heroes were giants with clay feet. I was still a kid, just a little older kid when my heroes began to loom precariously in my mind.
As a U.S. Marshall, Matt Dillon was a bit of a jerk. He would strut into the Long Branch Saloon, look around, and if he didn’t like the way somebody looked, or talked, without due process, he would run them out of Dodge…or worse…shoot them. His girlfriend, Miss Kitty, she was a hooker. As an officer of the law, he had a tendency to escalate the pettiest of situations until someone ended up dead.
In the series “Have Gun-Will Travel” the very name of the main character, Paladin, was borrowed from the warrior knights of Charlemagne’s court. But Paladin was more like a black knight on a black horse in shiny black leather. He roamed the West as a mercenary, offering his services, killing people, for a price of a $1000.00; a good guy with a gun. A $1000.00 in 1870 dollars is about $17,997.00 in today’s dollars. Now, I would certainly offer my services to just about anybody for $17,977.00. Not to kill anyone. But I’d certainly give someone a good tongue lashing for that much money. Have Mouth-Will Travel. Call me.
And Lucas McCain, the Rifleman, a self-righteous murdering vigilante with a semi-semi-automatic rifle who in nearly every episode took the law into his own hands. Today, all my childhood heroes, with the exception of the dog, Rin-Tin-Tin, would be in prison.
The premise of all these television shows was that the Wild West was…, well, wild. And parts of the west were quite wild. The mining camps and railroad heads were often several hundreds of miles from any form of formal law enforcement; hundreds of miles from any sort of accountability. Places like Bodie, California had a reputation for being a “shooter’s town”. Writing for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, Mark Twain wrote, “The smoke of battle almost never clears away completely in Bodie.” In the five year span between 1877 to 1882, there were 31 murders in this town of 2,700.
Truth is, for the most part, those who settled the West brought law and civilization with them. Before a wagon train left Saint Louis, the wagon master and his charges would meet and draw up a constitution, by-laws by which all agreed to abide. Even the California mining camps unanimously established accepted standards that protected both civil and property rights. Granted, calling someone a liar may have been considered legitimate grounds for retribution, but hey! Just don’t call anyone a liar.
Television has instilled in us a warped image of the Wild West. The year 1881 was the most violent year in the latter half of the 1800s in Tombstone, Arizona. That year, in this town of 3,500 people, five people were killed in gunfights. Three of which were killed by the town marshals Wyatt Earp and his brothers in an alley near the OK Corral. In 1876, the most violent year in the second half of the 1800s in Dodge City, Kansas, there were five homicides. During all the other years, Dodge City averaged 0.6 homicides per year.
So why was it that a place like Bodie, California had so many homicides while places like Tombstone and Dodge City and Abilene and Cheyenne and Wichita and Sacramento had so few? All these places, including Bodie, had laws. All these places, including Bodie, had law enforcement. All these places, except Bodie, had gun control laws. In all these places, except Bodie, it was illegal to carry or conceal a gun within city limits. No one thought these laws infringed upon anyone’s 2nd amendment rights. In all these places you could own firearms. You just couldn’t carry them around town. The gunfight at the OK Corral…Wyatt Earp and his brothers were attempting to disarm the Clantons and the McLaury brothers. They died.
When I was six years old I so wanted to be a gun-toting cowboy. All my heroes were cowboys. My most prized possessions were my cowboy hat, my cowboy boots, my cowboy vest and most precious, my holsters and six-shooter cap guns. But then I grew up.
