Gun Availability & Regulation in Early 20th C

by iamthegodemperor

This question is inspired by a 2015 essay by Robert J Spitzer and a frequently noted observation that Tommyguns were carried in Chicago hardware stores in the early 1920s.

The motivation for the question is to understand w/what ease or difficulty types of firearms associated with combat and rapid fire could be purchased by Americans in the first half of the 20th C. I appreciate there are multiple dimensions: cost, legal restrictions and differences in black markets, that could define accessibility and complicate a possible answer.

Partly this is to better evaluate and contextualize the above essay and responses to it, as well as to understand how comparisons to the contemporary moment (read 1990s) can be drawn.

Thanks for reading. I hope this is articulated well enough and does not break sub rules.

Duck_Sized_Dick

The history of gun control pretty much begins in 1934. There were small nudges made at it earlier, namely Nunn v. Georgia which was a Georgia Supreme Court ruling that a blanket ban of handguns was unconstitutional, but it really starts with the National Firearms Act of 1934.

The original NFA, which has been amended since then (but without changing the core premise) required all automatic firearms, legally defined as "machineguns" to be registered and taxed $200, or just about $3,700 in today's money. It placed the same restrictions on:

  1. Short Barreled Rifles and Short Barreled Shotguns, defined as a rifle or shotgun having a barrel under 16"
  2. Silencers (suppressors),
  3. Any Other Weapon, generally concealable firarms that don't look like guns, such as pen-guns, cigarette lighter-guns, although amusingly pistols with a foregrip also count,
  4. And Destructive Devices (grenades, bombs, missiles, poison gas, that sort of thing).

So up until 1934, not only could you walk into a hardware store and buy a Tommy Gun, you could have one mail-order delivered to your house, no questions asked.

After that it became trickier. Then there came the 1938 Federal Firearms Act. Now there were things called "FFLs" or Federal Firearms Licenses, and only someone with an FFL can sell guns as a means of income. You will note the specific exemption for people who do not sell guns as a means of income. This was intentional. If Bob wants to sell his gun to his friend Jim, that's fine. If Bob starts buying and selling guns for a living, he needs an FFL. The 1938 FFA also made it illegal to sell to people convicted of felonies.

Your question specifically deals with the first half of the 20th century so I'll stop there, the next Federal gun control legislation came in 1968 and so is just outside the scope of your question.

Tl;dr

Up until 1934 anyone could buy anything from anyone.

Up until 1938 anyone could buy most things from anyone.

After 1938 non-felons could buy most things from FFLs. Mostly.

Edit: Addendum, I will say there were numerous state laws that came both before and after the Civil War, but especially after the 1831 Insurrection, that explicitly prohibited black ownership of weapons. All weapons. Not just firearms, some states explicitly prohibited owning dogs for fear they could be trained as attack animals. These existed in varying strengths and status of being struck down by various courts up to and through the civil rights era.