An Argument on Guns That Proves Too Much

As a hunter who has owned firearms since adolescence without breaking any laws or feeling under-gunned, I think I am equipped to offer a modest proposal that could produce a safer America and also break the maniacal hold of the National Rifle Association on the nation’s recreational shooters, not to mention Congress.

My proposal is simply that we revert to the gun laws that prevailed in the United States around 1960. From a public-safety standpoint, that was far from a perfect world. The cheap revolvers called “Saturday night specials” ruled the night in many cities. Loopholes as to the sale and registration of long arms allowed the importation of the mail-order rifle that Lee Harvey Oswald used to kill President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

You know what didn't exist in 1960? Background checks. There was no prohibition against buying handguns in other states. There was no prohibition on mail-ordering handguns. You could send in an order form and a money order to Herter's and buy anything that you wanted, which your mailman would happily deliver. If you were a kid and you wanted to blow your lawn-mowing money on a box of .22 or .410 shells, you were free to do so. If you wanted to buy a 20mm cannon, have at it. While you still had to go through the paperwork hoops, you could buy a fresh-off-the-manufacturing-line submachine gun and yes, sports fans, those had large-capacity magazines. High schools had rifle clubs; kids brought their target rifles to school on the buses. Sure, concealed carry wasn't much of a thing, but as long as you met the primary qualifications of being an adult and Caucasian, nobody bothered you very much.

That was the "flawed status quo" that Mr. Raines is advocating be restored. Fat chance of that happening.

Beyond that, his argument is dangerous. If Second Amendment rights can be limited by tying them to a specific year, then so can other rights. In 1960, to the extend that CATV systems existed, their function was to bring signals to those people who lived in places where home antennas wouldn't work: People who lived where terrain blocked the signals or whose who lived in cities and so close to the powerful broadcasting antennas that the reflections from buildings caused "ghost" images. There was no Internet, so if you wanted to read a paper, you either subscribed or you trucked your happy ass to the local library or to the newsstand.

Raines is nothing more than a Fudd, a supposed hunter who is fine with any gun restrictions that don't affect him. With friends like these, gun owners don't need enemies.