The rest of the story

As we in the gun-rights community have often noted the anti-gun people have to cheat to win. Here is another attempt to cheat:

In Walt Whitman’s political tract, “The Eighteenth Presidency,” an attack on the dreadful state of American governance in 1856, he trained his sights on the “nominating dictators” of American political life. “Who are they?” he asked. The answer:

“Office-holders, office-seekers, robbers, pimps, exclusives, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, post-masters, custom-house clerks, contractors, kept-editors, spaniels well-trained to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, blowers, electioneerers, body-snatchers, bawlers, bribers, compromisers, runaways, lobbyers, sponges, ruined sports, expelled gamblers, policy backers, monte-dealers, duelists, carriers of concealed weapons, blind men, deaf men, pimpled men, scarred inside with the vile disorder, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people’s money and harlot’s money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combings and born freedom sellers of the earth.”

Emphasis in the original.

What the bigot didn’t mention is that the open carry of weapons was perfectly normal and acceptable at that time.

Update: After reading a comment to this post I realized I was easily misunderstood. When I said “Here is another attempt to cheat” I was referring to Mike Beard who wrote the post I linked to. Not Walt Whitman. Beard is saying people that want to carry concealed weapons have long been regarded as low-life. Beard failed to tell the rest of the story which does not match his agenda. I don’t have a problem with Whitman saying what he did because the culture was such that open carry and weapon possession in general was just fine. It was the concealment that was considered a problem. Beard wants to create a culture, and has largely succeeded, where weapons possession in general is a mark of a low-life and attempts to obtain support from history for his position.

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5 thoughts on “The rest of the story

  1. Now that’s interesting in the light on my post on friggin Gore and his latest guff. That it also supports gun rights is a neat thing.

  2. Back in 1856, I would imagine that carriers of concealed weapons WERE seen as suspicious and likely of criminal intent. After all, since open carry was so common, the main reason to conceal would be for malicious purposes. Is it necessary to find anti-gun conspiracy in nearly every comment that doesn’t shine of RKBA principle?

  3. Sooo, it was thought to be less then manly to conceal your weapon at that time.

    At this point, I’d attempt to make a poor joke about pants, and zippers and . . . But I won’t.

  4. DeFens, what I wrote I wasn’t clear. You would have had to follow the link I provided to make sense of the post. My fault. I’ll fix it.

    Sorry about that.

  5. I’d like to post a comment over there asking if the author supports open carry, but it would be (1) a waste of time, as he does not; and (2) impossible, as he does not allow comments.

    So concealed carry, or even desire to do so legally, is evidence of malicious intent, and open carry is also evidence of malicious intent, and both must not be allowed. Nice Catch-22 he has set up there. It would be too bad if anything happened to it….

    I suggest the ridicule continue until either he becomes embarrassed at his illogical stance, or we get many other people laughing at him along with us.

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