History can teach us a great deal – provided we study it. The same goes for where we are today regarding gun ownership.
In researching the history of the National Rifle Association, I discovered that today’s NRA nowhere resembles the NRA when it was granted a charter on Nov. 17, 1871, by the state of New York. Two former Union Army officers and a former reporter for the New York Times founded the organization to improve the marksmanship of northern urbanites. Apparently, the founders believed that the poor marksmanship of Northern soldiers compared to their Southern Confederate counterparts was so inferior that it prolonged the Civil War.
Until the 1960s, the NRA favored gun control legislation and helped draft legislation to that end. Their motto at the time was “Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation.” The Second Amendment wasn’ t a part of their platform.
Don’t believe me? Here’s just a few of the legislation the NRA helped to draft in the first half of the 20th Century.
The 1920s
The National Revolver Association proposed legislation that required the following:
- A person had to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon
- If the gun was used in a crime, five additional years of prison time was tacked onto the sentence
- Non-citizens were banned from buying guns
- A one-day waiting period was required between the time of purchase and the receipt of a firearm
- Guns sales records were made available to the police
Nine states adopted the bill proposed by this arm of the NRA, which was responsible for handgun training.
The 1930s
Due to the surge in violent crimes that broke out during Prohibition, President Franklin Roosevelt made gun control part of his New Deal package.
The 1934 National Firearms Act and the 1938 Gun Control Act, which were the first federal gun control laws, were drafted with the assistance of the NRA.
- The laws did the following:
- Placed heavy taxes and strict regulatory requirements on firearms associated with crimes, including machine guns, silencers, and sawed-off shotguns.
- Required gun sellers and owners to register with the federal government.
- Banned felons from owning weapons.
In 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law. Then NRA President Karl T. Frederick testified before Congress, stating, "I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general practice of promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses."2
For the next three decades, the NRA continued to support gun control legislation, even working to help strengthen laws in the 1960s in response to the deaths of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, and the deaths of his brother Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in 1968.
Following President Kennedy's assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald, who purchased from an NRA mail-order ad an Italian military surplus rifle, an NRA official testified during a congressional hearing that mail-orders sales should be banned.
NRA Executive Vice President Franklin Orth said, "We do think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States."2
In 1967, California's Mulford Act that banned carrying loaded weapons in public received the NRA's support. This was in response to an unplanned Black Panther Party march to protest gun control legislation on May 2 of that year on the state capitol.
Between the riots in the summer of 1967 and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassinations in 1968, Congress took action - unlike today - and passed the Gun Control Act of 1968. This should come as no surprise as Democrats dominated both chambers that year.
The act updated FDR's gun control laws and included the following:
- A minimum age requirement
- Serial number requirement
- Banned mentally ill and drug addicts from owning guns
- Restricted the shipping of firearms across state lines to collectors and federally licensed dealers
- Required a show of ID for the purchase of certain types of bullets
However, in what today could be seen as a foreshadowing of things to come, the NRA blocked the most rigorous part of the bill – a national registry of all guns and a license requirement for all gun carriers.
So what prompted the NRA to change its tune from what many may consider reasonable and responsible gun control laws? The year 1971 and raid of Kenyon Ballew's home in Maryland by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms and the Montgomery County, Maryland, police.
The raid was poorly executed by all accounts with only one uniformed officer among the agents and police and was prompted by a teenage burglar who thought he could exchange information for a lighter sentence.3 Ballew was a gun collector, and who from time-to-time sold and traded guns. Most of his weapons were deactivated war relics, along with some deactivated grenades used as paperweights.
After using a battering ram to burst into Ballew's and his wife's apartment (after first raiding the wrong one), Ballew, who was in the bathtub, was shot in the head after grabbing a percussion revolver and exchanging shots. His injury left him disabled, and no charges were ever brought against him. Other than the aforementioned deactivated guns and grenades, the agents only found the black gunpowder that he used for his muzzle-loading guns.
This injustice prompted the NRA to turn against the federal government and begin using the language of the Black Panthers from four years earlier – the Second Amendment protects individuals' gun rights.4
Since then, the NRA has fought virtually every single piece of legislation at any government level – local, state or federal – that does anything other than allow the ownership of virtually any-type of firearm to be carried almost anywhere.
Personally, I think the NRA needs to study its own history, along with each elected member of the House and Senate in every state and in the federal government. Then they need to take action like many of their predecessors dead decades ago.
Partisan politics should play no role in this debate. The issue at hand is about enacting practical, common-sense regulations on gun ownership that will save lives.
And that should be the goal of all of us.
1 When the NRA Supported Gun Control | Time, http://time.com/4431356/nra-gun-control-history (accessed February 15, 2018).
2 The Birth Of The Modern Gun Debate | The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/the-birth-of-the-modern-gun-debate (accessed February 16, 2018).
3 Our Endangered Tradition | Field & Stream, https://books.google.com/books?id=eWkKYPfhd_gC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=%22kenyon+ballew%22&source=bl&ots=davFlDZOhz&sig=Stbw1gKj1TvdXshvRfEGGRymrdQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwimyd_szpnOAhVEuhoKHaVkBvsQ6AEIVjAN#v=onepage&q=%22kenyon%20ballew%22&f=false (accessed February 15, 2018)
4 When the NRA Supported Gun Control | Time, http://time.com/4431356/nra-gun-control-history (accessed February 15, 2018).