Reformation

• 1850s  After Civil War
  – Kept guns out of the hands of the freed slaves
• 1900s
  – Kept guns out of the hands of minorities & immigrants in the north

Prohibition

• 1930s
• In reaction to Organized Crime created by Prohibition
• Full Auto Scare
• 1949 Saturday Night Specials

Culture Wars

• Late 1960s
  – New York City, long gun registration
• Spike in Crime
  – Street Violence, Assassinations
• 1975 Drive to Register Guns with computers (failed)
  – 1977 Privacy Act ?
• the Political Left “Became Anti-Gun”
• 1982 Cop-Killer Bullets
  – Teflon-coated handgun bullets that could penetrate police body armor
  – Teflon-coated bullets have been around since the late 1960s
  – developed for the police, were not available to the public at first
• November 1982 California
  – rejected, by a 63-37% margin, a statewide handgun initiative that called for the registration of all handguns and a “freeze” on the number of handguns allowed in the state
• 1988 – Semi-Automatic Assault Weapon
  – Josh Sugarmann “report on assault weapons”
• 1991 New York City ban on  “assault weapons”

“We will never fully solve our nation’s horrific problem of gun violence unless we ban the manufacture and sale of handguns and semi-automatic assault weapons.”
–USA Today, December 29, 1993

• 1996 Australian long gun confiscation
• 2003 Australian confiscation of handguns

Post AWB Assault on Gun Owners

• 2010s
  – Social Media propaganda