Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 7 Sep 2018This video was commissioned by Patron Matthew Ritter. Thanks Matthew! If you would like to support the channel and earn special rewards, check out our Patreon page: www.patreon.com/OSP
Articles referenced — Because Gun Control and Black Cowboys sound incredulous on paper so I can see why you wouldn’t believe me but it’s real and there’s tons of proof:
Gun Control in the West: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor…
Black Cowboys: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor…MERCH LINKS:
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Another article covering gun control in the “Wild West” says:
… enforcement of the anti carry ordinances in Tombstone and Dodge City and other frontier towns like Deadwood, South Dakota that had them were highly selective. In Tombstone, those friendly with the Earps and their buddies got a pass. In Dodge City those friendly with the powers that be and or the Dodge City Gang — which included Wyatt when there — got a pass too on the side of Dodge with the carry ban. That “side” is a rarely mentioned fact. […] The famous sign reading “The Carrying of Firearms Strictly Prohibited” so often used to promote similar laws today was at the entrance to the North incorporated portion where the “decent” Dodge permanent residents sought to exclude riffraff like the drovers and maintain a somewhat puritan lifestyle. Women were not allowed in saloons and singing or dancing was against the law.
The cowboys and other undesirables were supposed to stay below the Deadline according to Wyatt Earp in the book The Old West in Fact and Film: History Versus Hollywood: “Below the deadline, as far as the marshals force was concerned, almost anything went, and a man could get away with gunplay if he wasn’t too careless about lead. North of the railroad, gun toting was justification for shooting on site, if an officer was so inclined, and meant certain arrest.”
Sounds like cut no slack enforcement, but there are simply too many accounts of gun carry on the North side to believe Earp’s account was anything other than his famed self promoting hyperbole. One example is the 1879 gunfight in the Long Branch Saloon between gamblers Frank Loving and Levi Richardson. Loving killed Richardson and a magistrate ruled the killing justifiable self defense. Even so, why was he not charged with illegal gun carry? Possibly because Dodge’s no carry laws and others like it else- where were not put on the books purely for public safety reasons as anti-Second Amendment activists claim …
