| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation examines the regulation of firearms and other weapons throughout Texas history, from the founding of the Republic of Texas in 1836 until the eve of federal firearm legislation in 1930. During that near-century, Texans lived with increasingly stringent laws regulating the ownership, sale, and carrying of various weapons. During Reconstruction, Texas stood out as a pioneer in the realm of comprehensive weapon regulations, going so far as to ban pistols, knives, and sword canes in the public sphere. Some Texans enjoyed exemption from this regulation, though over the course of the late nineteenth century such exceptions became increasingly rare. Though Republicans enacted the initial legislation during their brief tenure in power, Democrats retained the law and indeed amended it over the ensuing decades to make it more effective. State courts had ample opportunity to assess its constitutionality and consistently declared it to be a legitimate exercise of the state¿s police power. The popularity of this law over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries points to the rise of middle-class values in Texas that eschewed rowdiness and male violence in favor of restraint. Alongside this shift in societal conceptions of ¿manly¿ behavior, the retention of this ¿pistol law¿ illustrates the early development of a progressive impulse among the inhabitants of the bustling market towns in America¿s interior. The coercive side of this progressivism was on display in the enforcement of the state¿s deadly weapon laws. Statistical evidence indicates that enforcement in the early decades was equitable but became racially discriminatory by 1890, aligning with the establishment of segregation laws around the same time. Despite the Lone Star State¿s reputation as a bastion of ¿Wild West¿ gun violence, by the eve of the First World War Texas actually boasted some of the most far-reaching gun and weapon laws in the country. This dissertation focuses on the formulation, amendment, and enforcement of state-level legislation, a crucial part of the history of firearm regulation that has been overlooked by many scholars. | |
