I was dealing with a real bureaucratic mess today and my husband brought this up. I remember my maternal grandfather grumbling about a used car salesman, "If someone had done this to me when I was nineteen I would have punched him out." That's just one example; he used to say things like that all the time, and my paternal grandfather used to say similar things. They couldn't have really gotten away with things like that that, though, could they? I have to assume this was just frustrated reminiscing about the "good old days" that wasn't strictly accurate and not something that was actually widespread, but then, I don't know much about day-to-day life in the immediate post-war era either.
Crime data from the 1940s to 50s is a pain to find, but if somebody can find better sources than I can then please feel free to post it and I'll delete this post.
As I couldn't find statistics earlier than 1960 I'll look at the general trends, now I can infer from these however take my inferences with a pinch of salt.
Your claim is suggesting that assaults were more common in the 1940s or 50s, or at least that assaults were not treated as seriously and arrests were less common.
The data from the FBI UCS Annual Crime Reports source starts from 1960 and we can see a much lower rate of assaults (arrests only, not actual occurences) compared to even the end of the decade. 1960 had 154,320 arrests for aggravated assault compared to 311,090 by 1969 peaking finally at 1,135,610 in 1993. Per capita this works out at 86.1 per 100,000 in 1960; 154.5 in 1969 and a peak of 441.8 in 1992 (population increases meant it peaked a year early per capita.)
The latest figures of 2014 put Aggravated Assault at 232.5 per 100,000.
These figures suggest that Aggravated Assault has become more common today than in 1960. However because these are arrest figures. The crime that your grandfather is talking about is more likely to be simple arrest which has the definition of
The UCR defines simple assault as an assault or attempted assault that does not involve a weapon or no serious or aggravated injury results to the victim. Stalking, intimidation, coercion, and hazing are included in this category of offense.
Simple assault figures were not available over the same period of time, however they have generally followed the same trend though growth was much higher in fact.
Conclusion
I cannot confirm, nor deny what your question asked. However what I can say is that arrests for assault, both aggravated and simple skyrocketed from 1960 to 2000, since 2000 levels have dropped below pre 1980 levels however are much much higher than 1960 and presumably 1940 and 50. This does not mean that assault was more common in the 1990s than it was in the 1940s and 50s but that it was more widely reported and taken more seriously as such arrest rates have gone up.
As a follow-up, can I ask if there were more serious repercussions to these "good old days" fights than people realized? I, like OP, do often hear about "guys settling things like men," in other words with fist fight. Simple fist fights can be extremely dangerous. Are there any accounts of these interactions leading to concussions, brain damage, death, etc? I have zero idea how one might go about answering this, but I wonder if this was the case in the "good old days," if these practices didn't slowly die out as medical science caught up to how many ways a blow to the head can go wrong.
Regarding whether "assault laws really [were] that weak... back then:"
In the time period in question criminal law in the US would have been a patchwork of state laws (this is less the case today due to widespread adoption of the Model Penal Code), so whether "punching" someone would have amounted to an assault depends on the laws in that state at that time. Generally speaking, this would have been an assault. Modern assault laws trace their roots to common law assault crimes, under which such conduct would be an assault, and the specific assault laws that I have seen from that time would also cover such conduct.
For example, the Ohio General Code (in force from 1910 to 1953) defined criminal assault as "assault[ing] or threaten[ing] another in a menacing manner, or unlawfully strik[ing] or wound[ing] another." Ohio Gen. Code Sec. 12422.
New York beginning circa 1910 appears to have defined third degree assault as "an assault, or an assault and battery" not specified elsewhere as second degree (poisoning, "inflicting grievous bodily harm upon another, either with or without a weapon," assault with a weapon "likely to produce grievous bodily harm," or assault with intent to commit another felony) or first degree (poisoning or assault with a firearm or other deadly weapon, with intent to kill or commit another felony). Consolidated Laws of The State of New York, 1909, vol. 4, Article 20 Sec. 240 - 244. (Unfortunately, I can't confirm how long these sections of law were good for - Ohio's section was renumbered between 1953 and repealed and replaced in 1972 and I can't locate that text, and I don't have LexisNexis access to NY law.)
I haven't dug through case law to determine what courts considered an "assault" to be in either of these cases - the definitions are a bit tautological, as you can see - but the common law definition of assault as "the threat or use of force on another" is illuminating. Black's identifies this definition back to the 14th century. Black's Law Dictionary, 9th Ed. (As an aside, assault and battery can have different meanings at different times in different jurisdictions - although assault is often thought of as requiring a touching, assault in some jurisdictions is actually any act that puts another in reasonable* apprehension* of harmful or offensive contact; battery, on the other hand, always requires an actual touching. Whether jurisdictions make this distinction, roll assault and battery into a single crime, or otherwise varies.)
For comparison as to whether the above examples were "weak," consider the modern equivalents of those two statutes. Ohio Revised Code 2903.13 defines assault as "knowingly caus[ing] or attempt[ing] to cause physical harm to another." New York's is intentionally or recklessly causing physical injury to another. New York Penal Law Sec. 120. As you can see, other than an additional mens rea requirement, they cover basically the same conduct.
While this is clearly not an exhaustive examination of assault statutes it should give some idea that the crime of assault really hasn't changed much - other than being codified it has hardly changed since its articulation in common law. Additionally, the common law crimes of assault and battery (which as classically stated definitely would cover punching someone) would still have been good law in some jurisdictions at this time, as well as the civil tort versions.
Note of course that doing something illegal and being prosecuted for it are two separate questions, and I am not equipped to answer that question. Based on the text of the statutes, I would say that social norms and mores about "settling things like men," as other commenters have said, is really the relevant question as far as "getting away" with it goes.
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Edit: Additionally, as this topic heavily intersects with the field of criminology, it would be worth considering cross-posting it to /r/AskSocialScience.