YOU'LL TAKE MY GUNS WHEN YOU PRY THEM FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS!!!

One might presume that was the position of the Clanton gang, when they violated the gun control ordinances of the town of Tombstone, Arizona... (no carrying guns within town limits).

After not only violating town ordinances by carrying guns within town limits, but when at least one member of their gang (Ike Clanton) spent the previous night and part of the next day threatening the lives of law enforcement officers, (sound familiar??)

THEY LOST.

(Not sure who pried the guns from their cold dead fingers afterwards, and neither were they.)


On another site, someone mentioned their intention to watch the movie 'Tombstone', which brought all these thoughts to my mind... besides the fact that I once made that 'famous walk' myself, in the same location.

“Tombstone” is very entertaining— but Kevin Costner’s “Wyatt Earp” would seem to have been much more historically accurate— and Dennis Quaid’s performance as Doc Holliday is priceless… He went to a great deal of trouble to lose so much weight to appear tubercular… Don’t get me wrong, I love Val Kilmer’s performance too, “I’m your huckleberry”, but ‘Tombstone’ seemed written more to please audiences than to portray the story accurately…

(I am a great fan of history, and a student of the famous Tombstone gunfight, and have actually BEEN there to the site of the shootout— which really took place on the street BEHIND the OK corral, next to Fly’s photography studio and boardinghouse…. It only became known as the ‘Gunfight at the Ok Corral’ because the 1950s rendition of it starring Burt Lancaster was so titled. That movie title was catchier than “Gunfight behind the OK corral next to Fly’s photography studio and boardinghouse”...)

This gunfight between the Earps and Clanton gang was actually not typical, as a standup fight in the street with the ‘High Noon’ walk hardly ever happened in real life, but the story of this fight became the dramatic standard for later western movies. In fact, most “gunfights” in the old west were ambushes where one party was bushwhacked without prior notice. One of the other most famous policeman of the west, ‘Wild Bill Hickok’, was shot in the back during a poker game— where his friends, as a sort of joke, denied him his preferred seating arrangement— with his back against a wall.

What I find particularly ironic about the Tombstone story, is that the Earps, like most law enforcement of the time, were advocates of gun control— indeed, the gunfight came about because the Clantons were armed, in defiance of town ordinances…. and the Earps made “the long walk” for the purpose of disarming them.

They enforced gun control, and they were Republicans.

Most Republicans today probably think of them as heroes, because they used guns to subdue “criminals”—
but they do their best to ignore the crime in question-- that the "criminals" were violating local gun control laws....

Further, by my research of the question, they seemed to have been somewhat "surprised" by the fact that the local law enforcement came forward to enforce that particular law against them... and Virgil Earp asked them to throw down their guns. They thought they could run their mouths off, without any consequences...

By my reading of the surviving historical testimonies, one of the Clanton party drew first---
and the Earps, although charged with 'murder' in the shooting, the charges were dismissed by a judge who subsequently was subject to death threats from partisans of the losers....


The biggest takeaway for me here, is that
"once upon a time, Republicans fought for 'gun control' "

of course, back in those days, I believe I would have been a Republican myself--
supporting the anti-slavery party...

The big change might have come in the 1890s, when the the Democrats became the party of 'free silver', and money for the masses--
but I would have had a problem with the remaining racist sentiments, which survived through the 1960s, especially in the south...


but I am a Northern Democrat, of course. Northern Democrats and Republicans did pass the civil rights laws of the 1960s...