Old West towns curbed firearms to promote safety

To the editor:

Let me set the record straight about Wyatt Earp. Tombstone, Ariz., had a prohibition on firearms. Earp enforced the ban when he worked as a peace officer. Earp's brother, Virgil Earp, was town marshal. Virgil sometimes appointed Wyatt a deputy and usually named him acting marshal in his absence.

The morning of the OK Corral shootout, Virgil and Morgan Earp had pistol-whipped and arrested firebrand Ike Clanton for illegally carrying a carbine and six-shooter. The arrest led to a court hearing in which Clanton was fined and to several other encounters that culminated in the afternoon gunfight, which Clanton fled. The pretext for the fight was that the Clanton and McLowry brothers had re-armed as they prepared to leave town. Peace officers normally would have tolerated this had not a blood feud existed.

Virtually all western mining camps and cattle towns saw the need to contain the violence spawned by reckless cowhands and miners and the frontier aura in general. They adopted ordinances prohibiting the carrying of firearms and required cowhands and other visitors to check their weapons. This isn't to say the peace officers enforced the ban uniformly or fairly.

Firearms were as common as dust in the Old West. Most males owned weapons, kept them in their homes or bedrolls and carried them for protection or hunting outside city limits.

The Second Amendment is pretty clear. We can own firearms. But states and cities customarily have regulated how we bear them, even in the Old West.

BILL ZELLMER

Cape Girardeau