I don't get why people freak out over the dead cops in Dallas.

[Igel]

71. Like most of this thread, it's using a broad brush to paint a picture with a thousand little flowers

You don't get anything out that you think you're after.

The "wild west" didn't last for long, had fuzzy borders, and didn't ban guns. Individual towns--we're talking little patches of a few hundred people to a few thousand people--did ban guns, but it wasn't evenly enforced.

By the way, this was the kind of law that eventually went to SCOTUS, who found that the gun control laws enacted by states and local governments were constitutional because the 2A didn't apply to states but only to the federal government. Such local laws were found to be Constitutional at the time.

They didn't decide the issue as to how the 2A applied to federal rules because they weren't asked that question. However, it pays to point out that from 1865 to the 1930s and beyond, the US Constitution was interpreted by courts as applying more and more to state and local government in areas like free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, due process, etc., etc. Until then, it would be legal for a state, if its state constitution allowed it, to ban certain kinds of speech, prohibit assembly, have a state religion, or ban letting blacks vote. We like having the amendments trickle down to lower jurisdictions when we like the outcome, but not when we don't, we like having the US constitution rein in local government.

My home state of Maryland was Catholic and had enacted a lot of blue laws to enforce Sunday-sabbath observance. Bloody pain, because when I was young the laws still existed. State liquor stores closed at 6, and if you were a Saturday-sabbath keeper who couldn't get to a liquor store before it closed after work it meant you had a heck of a time doing something like buying wine for Passover or beer for a Sunday cook-out. Now, in Texas, it still trips me up when I'm shopping and buying wine Sunday morning. No alcohol sales until noon, but now that's "morality" and not "religion." One area of Houston still has a 19th-century restriction based on "morality" of not allowing alcohol sales. Originally done out of religious motivation, it's also just "morals-based" now.