>>> Item number 203, dated 93/10/15 21:28:13 -- ALL
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 21:28:13 CDT
Reply-To: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
Sender: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
From: cfcrw@ecnuxa.bitnet
Subject: Guns and the Law
Joe Wells <jwells@emoryu1.cc.emory.edu>
I am a second year graduate student (and former lawyer) at Emory
University doing some research on the social and legal history of guns and
violence in the U.S. I am trying to find a source to confirm or deny
something a colleague told me: that some or all Union soldiers were
permitted to keep some or all of their light weapons after the Civil War.
So far, I have not been able to find any references to the disposition of
government issue weapons during the demobilization in the Congressional
Globe or some of the better known Civil War treatises. Any suggestions on
where I might be able to dig up information on this issue would be much
appreciated.
Thanks,
Joel Wells
>>> Item number 214, dated 93/10/19 13:20:10 -- ALL
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1993 13:20:10 CDT Reply-To: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> Sender: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> From: cfcrw@ecnuxa.bitnet Subject: Re: Guns and the Law (fwd)
I do not know the data on the civil war, but American revolutionary war soldier s were permitted to keep their guns when the army disbanded. Elizabeth M. Nuxoll, The Papers of Robert Morris
>>> Item number 215, dated 93/10/19 21:46:50 -- ALL
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1993 21:46:50 CDT Reply-To: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> Sender: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> From: cfcrw@ecnuxa.bitnet Subject: Re: Guns and the Law (fwd)
Ms. Nuxoll:
Thanks for the interesting parallel. It's beginning to sound like letting demobilizing soldiers take their firearms with them was sort of a customary courtesy. You wouldn't happen to have a citation re revolutionary vets within conveneient reach, would you? I'm gathering this information for a professor for whom I'm doing research this semester. Thanks again for the information.
Joel Wells
Emory University
jwells@emoryu1.cc.emory.edu
On Tue, 19 Oct 1993 cfcrw%ecnuxa.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu wrote:
> I do not know the data on the civil war, but American revolutionary war sold
er
> s were permitted to keep their guns when the army disbanded.
> Elizabeth M. Nuxoll, The Papers of Robert Morris
>>> Item number 255, dated 93/11/02 12:59:17 -- ALL
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 12:59:17 CST Reply-To: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> Sender: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> From: cfcrw@ecnuxa.bitnet Subject: Re: Guns and the Law
> This message was originally submitted by EMNQC@CUNYVM.
The main resolution is in the Journals of the Continental Congress; dated May 26, 1783 Volume 24, p. 364. We also have some discussion in our forthcoming volume of the Morris Papers about an attempt to deny the right to the guns to those who participated in the Philadelphia mutiny of 1783. Will forward additional data to you at a later date.
Sincerely Elizabeth M. Nuxoll, The Papers of Robert Morris
>>> Item number 257, dated 93/11/02 17:32:31 -- ALL
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 17:32:31 CST Reply-To: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> Sender: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> From: cfcrw@ecnuxa.bitnet Subject: Guns and the Law
The main resolution is in the Journals of the Continental Congress; dated May 26, 1783 Volume 24, p. 364. We also have some discussion in our forthcoming volume of the Morris Papers about an attempt to deny the right to the guns to those who participated in the Philadelphia mutiny of 1783. Will forward additional data to you at a later date.
Sincerely Elizabeth M. Nuxoll, The Papers of Robert Morris
>>> Item number 258, dated 93/11/03 21:34:18 -- ALL
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 21:34:18 CST Reply-To: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> Sender: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> From: cfcrw@ecnuxa.bitnet Subject: Re: Guns and the Law
> The main resolution is in the Journals of the Continental Congress; dated
> May 26, 1783 Volume 24, p. 364. We also have some discussion in our
> forthcoming volume of the Morris Papers about an attempt to deny the
> right to the guns to those who participated in the Philadelphia mutiny of
> 1783. Will forward additional data to you at a later date.
>
> Sincerely Elizabeth M. Nuxoll, The Papers of Robert Morris
Ms. Nuxoll:
I also would like to learn about the the Morris Papers when they appear.
Please notify me as well. Thank you.
SRSilverburg
>>> Item number 279, dated 93/11/09 07:10:21 -- ALL
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 07:10:21 CST Reply-To: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> Sender: Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> From: cfcrw@ecnuxa.bitnet Subject: Re: Guns and the Law
From: "Elizabeth M. Nuxoll" <EMNQC%CUNYVM@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU> The Papers of Robert Morris covers Robert Morris's Papers as Superintendent of Finance and Agent of Marine of the United States from 1781-1784, plus related private papers. Seven volumes are already out covering through May 4, 1783; volume 8, covering through the end of 1783 is now in press. Volume 9, the last volume, will cover 1784. Our collection of photocopies of Morris documents from other periods is extensive but not complete. We use them for supplementary research but don't plan to publish them. Besides the major military, political, and constitutional issues one would expect the volumes to cover, there are many texts relating to items more specifically of interest to legal historians, such as naval and army courts martial, prize cases, mercantile and public arbitration cases, laws regarding the liability of public officials for damages and seizures in wartime, questions of liability for losses due to depreciation of money, mixed juries in cases involving foreign defendents, and the like. I hope to ask the advice of some of you on these points. I also hope the texts will be useful to some of you. Sincerely, Elizabeth M. Nuxoll, The Papers of Robert Morris, Queens College CUNY. 718/997-5180
>>> Item number 985, dated 95/01/10 07:22:19 -- ALL
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 07:22:19 -0600 Reply-To: H-Net and ASLH Legal History Discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> Sender: H-Net and ASLH Legal History Discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET> From: Chris Waldrep <cfcrw@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu> Subject: More on Gun Regulation
From: Booth-CGB003 Greg <Booth-CGB003_Greg@msmail_gw.mdd.comm.mot.COM>
Lets see,
US federal laws w.r.t. import/export, interstate transport, firearms dealers,
manufacturers, etc. Every state, district, territory has its own laws, every
county, municipality, city, town, village can and does have its own laws.
And how do you count them, by general description, or by section, subsection,
paragraph, subparagraph of the legal text? Does it include common law
decisions?
And as laws are added, changed, deleted, thrown out in court, ignored, created
only in the minds of various snivel servants yet still applied, interpreted,
re-interpreted etc, the count changes even further.
The real answer is that the 20,000 is a guess that is many years old. I saw a write-up on this from the NRA within the last year. It may be something someone came up with in the late 60's and was out of date almost immediately.
And for how many communities did he check for local ordinances? If he found 1,500 just looking at Federal and, presumably, state laws...there are a *lot* of cities, villages, and towns out there that have plenty of their own gun ordinances.
My small town of Fenton, MO has at least two recent ones that I'm aware of, plus probably several older ones of which I'm not aware.
What would it take, less than one gun ordinance per municipality to make up the other 18,500?
-Rich
This message was originally submitted by etw2@COLUMBIA.EDU to the H-LAW list at d>
I had thought that pretensions to "objectivity" went out of fashion with the rise of postmodern discourse and healthy cynicism. One area to explore may be the relation between regulation and the "quality of our civilization" as you suggest, another might be the way in which contemporary and historical legal arguments are framed using the Second Amendment. It does seem to be regulated to a degree that far outstrips the authors' ideas of "shall not be infringed." The literature on the 2nd Amendment is extensive, obviously, and there have been quite a few law review articles on the subject in the past decade. What is also interesting is the manner in which "rights" are reconstructed over time, eg, how obscenity statutes have changed the 1st Amendment; how guns have been re-imagined as a health issue; etc. By the way, is there anyone who doesn't believe that OJ's 4th Amendment rights "against unreasonable searches and seizures" were not violated?
Eric Wakin
Columbia University
etw2@columbia.edu
From: vieira@garnet.berkeley.edu
I hope by now it is not news that there are some rather strong sentiments about gun control. The NRA, Gun Control Inc., and other groups can fill you in on that. The new digital display in downtown NYC indicates this is a serious public topic. Another question that relates to this list: does the NRA use the three-period ellipsis at the end of "right to bear arms..." because it knows that were it to quote more completely in its building's inscription it would uncover what it hopes all its opponents never will: that the constitution clearly places this right within the context of serving in the state militia (Amend II). Given that the organiztion of said militia is also clearly given over to Congress (Art. I, Sect. 8, para 16) and that such militia became our current armed forces and police departments, perhaps a strong argument can be made that only such forces have the constitutional right to bear arms. Any merit to this?
Thanks for reading.
Robert Vieira
UC Berkeley
vieira@garnet.berkeley.edu
This message was originally submitted by SCHWEITZ@UCIS.VILL.EDU
The emotionalism on the subject of weapons legislation is indeed interesting.
What I am personally fascinated by is the way the Second Amendment has been resurrected to define gun-ownership not as a property rights or individualism issue, but rather as a Constitutional issue -- that is, to even consider restrictions on gun ownership is antiAmerican, in a way that other legislation restricting property ownership is not. It removes it from an issue that could be settled politically, perhaps by compromise, to one that cannot even be debated rationally.
My own specialty is early American/economic history -- I have published research on economic regulation in colonial America, and am currently working on the multiple meanings of political economy at the time of the ratification of and resistance to the Constitution; the Jefferson/Hamilton (faux) debate; federal/state/local control of economic issues; blurred lines of community/court/government in accomplishing community-identified goals. The Second Amendment seems to have taken on a life of its own. Rather obviously, it was NOT the product of the "founding fathers", if by "founding fathers" one means the authors of the Constitution at the Convention. It is rather commonplace in my field to acknowledge that the Bill of Rights as a whole resulted from a compromise with anti-Federalists at the Mass, NY and VA conventions (and first suggested by rabid PA anti-federalists) out of fear of overbearing centralized Federal power. So the supporters would have been the Shaysites; the Henryites in Virginia; the "radical" backcountry Pennsylvanians who tarred and feathered James Wilson in effigy. (The final version was watered down; you should see the counterpart in the PA Constitution.) If the amendment ever had any meaning at all, it was effectively viciated by Washington when he quashed the Whiskey Rebellion two hundred years ago. And if anything violates what seems to me to be the spirit of the amendment, it would be the Federal takeover of the National Guard in recent years. At least that's how it looks from the standpoint of an early Americanist.
At any rate, no one disputes that an individual has a right to place loaded cannon or a tank or an ICBM on one's front lawn. (Facing that neighbor who plays music too loud at night...) Why reify handguns or automatic weapons? (I thought the court settled that with the case involving tommyguns and the mob, anyway.) One can certainly understand the rhetorical advantage -- but it clearly SPEAKS to something inside. Where is the direction of causation? That is, is it the effectiveness of the rhetoric that has convinced so many Americans that gun control is unAmerican? Or is there something about guns, power, fear of loss of control that is entangled with a willingness to BELIEVE that gun control is unAMerican, that makes it seem natural it must somehow be IN the constitution and therefore not debatable?
Regarding the multiplicity of regulations: some of that is simply the weird form of government we have in th United States. I imagine one could find an awful lot of regulations on a number of subjects (jaywalking for example). Thus once you pin down the original reference, and pin down its accuracy, you also want to compare it to the way regulations proliferate among local/state/federal jursidictions, anyway. Building codes, for example.
From: swainstonre@libra.unm.edu
Just a quick personal statement:
I saw Schindler's List last night! I will never give up my gun.