{"id":1210,"date":"2013-08-07T10:43:44","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T15:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/?p=1210"},"modified":"2013-08-07T10:43:44","modified_gmt":"2013-08-07T15:43:44","slug":"the-gun-toters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/the-gun-toters\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gun Toters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Print this entry<\/a><\/p>

The Gun Toters<\/b><\/p>\n

By Gary B. Borders<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Texas has a richly deserved reputation as a gun-toting state. In the months following the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings of twenty children and six adults in Connecticut, President Obama and others led failed attempts in Congress to ban assault weapons and large magazine clips and even a modest attempt to widen background checks on gun buyers. A few state legislatures \u2014 Connecticut, New York and Colorado \u2014 have passed stricter gun laws. At the same time, Texas politicians attempted to make guns more<\/i> available, proposing to arm teachers and other school employees, to allow college students to carry concealed weapons on campus, and to permit concealed pistols to be carried in bars and churches. Texas\u2019s statewide elected officials \u2014 all Republicans these days \u2014 were led by Gov. Rick Perry \u2014 who once gunned down a coyote while jogging, claiming it was going to attack his dog. He said Obama\u2019s gun control efforts \u201cpersonally disgusted him.\u201d When rifle manufacturer PTR Industries announced it was leaving Connecticut after gun-control laws were passed, Perry posted on Twitter: \u201cHey, PTR, Texas is still wide open for business!! Come on down!\u201d<\/p>\n

Texas congressman Steve Stockman, who once brilliantly opined that, \u201cif babies had guns they wouldn\u2019t be aborted,\u201d invited all \u201cunwanted\u201d and \u201cpersecuted\u201d gun owners to move to the Lone Star State. Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ran ads in New York, telling citizens to \u201cKeep Their Guns and Come To Texas.\u201d This might mark the first use of the Second Amendment as a migration lure. It is unclear how many citizens of the Empire State have opted to pack up and move across the Red River at Abbott\u2019s invitation.<\/p>\n

It might surprise these politicians to learn they represent a state whose leaders a century or so ago \u2014 in politics, business and the press \u2014 almost unanimously abhorred the practice of carrying concealed weapons, calling those who did so \u201cgun toters.\u201d They didn\u2019t intend it as a compliment, either. The Texas Legislature at the time even passed a law intended to vastly reduce in-state pistol sales. For a number of years it was practically impossible to legally buy a pistol in Texas \u2014 though you could \u201crent\u201d one for a very reasonable price and for up to 50 years. More on that later.<\/p>\n

Here is a sampling of what Texas newspaper editors \u2014 almost unanimously white men committed to protecting the political power structure already in place, and not particularly interested in enfranchisement of blacks or women \u2014 had to say about folks carrying guns back in the turn of the last century.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The editor of the Gainesville Register<\/i> wrote in March of 1900, \u201cEvery man\u2019s life that is sacrificed to the fool with a gun in his pocket is a cry to the Texas Legislature for an act making it a penal offense for pistol carrying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 His counterpart at the Wharton Eagle<\/i> in November 1901 wrote, \u201cStop the practice of carrying pistols and three-fourths of the murders now ocurring (sic) would be avoided. A man who carries concealed weapons is a candidate for trouble and generally finds it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 The Liberty Hill Index<\/i> in September 1900 suggested that men be encouraged to wear shirtwaists \u2014 a foppish fashion then the rage in more cosmopolitan cities \u2014 because the \u201cwearer has no place to carry his sixshooter.\u201d The Hillsboro Mirror<\/i> a few months earlier recommended making pistol-toting a prison offense.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The Austin Tribune <\/i>in 1903 even went so far as to advocate the death penalty for pistol carrying, though the paper noted it would amount to little since the law was rarely enforced.<\/p>\n

How dangerous a place was Texas in the early 1900s, that it would prompt politicians, editors and other do-gooders to try to outlaw pistols in a state where the six-shooter was as much a part of the Texas mystique as the Longhorn steer? We took a look at two year\u2019s worth of stories in The Daily Sentinel<\/i>, the Nacogdoches newspaper. Nacogdoches, in Deep East Texas, is considered the oldest town in Texas. In 1900 the city had a population of 1,800; the county had about 24,000 residents. Most folks farmed to make a living. The city had its share of saloons, was populated by both whites and blacks, had long been settled by Mexican families before the Texas revolution, and seems to provide an apt example of a typical Texas small town in the early 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

The newspaper reported 15 killings in 1902 and 13 more homicides in 1903, nearly all involving firearms, though a few folks used knives or two-by-fours. That doesn\u2019t include, of course, the numerous near-misses whose accounts dotted the newspaper\u2019s pages. By comparison, in 2012, with a county population approaching more than twice as many, just one murder was recorded. Here are a few of the accounts from 1902-1903:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Elbert Clifton shot Jim Clevenger at the Palestine church, about four miles west of town on an April Saturday night. He, in turn, was plugged for his troubles by Clevenger\u2019s brother, Joe. It seemed there was a lot of saddle cutting and other disturbances going on during the singing and prayer meeting, It soon escalated into gunplay. One ventures to guess the sermon was not terribly compelling.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Thirteen years after a black man named George Burk had killed a white man by the name of Alvin Murphey in neighboring San Augustine County with a fence rail, Sandy Murphey exacted his revenge \u2014 thus fulfilling his dying father\u2019s wish. Murphey was nine when his father \u2014 reportedly drunk as Cooter Brown when Burk clobbered him \u2014 on his deathbed made his sons promise to kill Burk when they became old enough. That was certainly a heavy burden for the young tykes to bear but Murphey proved up to the task.<\/p>\n

Burk had been acquitted of murder and moved to Nacogdoches, no doubt figuring a change of scenery was in order. It was his poor fortune to be in Richardson & Eichel\u2019s store at the same time as Sandy Murphey, who heard the clerk call Burk\u2019s name. Murphey asked if he was indeed George Burk. Saying yes proved costly. Murphey drew a .45 Colt pistol and shot him in the heart. The editor noted that scores of substantial Nacogdoches citizens stood Murphey\u2019s bond.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Two black men were killed and a third man acting as peacemaker died hours later, just north of the Sentinel<\/i> office, in a shooting affray that began in the kitchen of a black-owned restaurant. Either a game of craps or a woman was thought to be the reason behind the shooting. The editor noted \u201cthey both had good guns, one a 41 and the other a 45 Colt six-shooter.\u201d Henry Abrahams, a \u201ccolored barber,\u201d tried to break up the fight and got shot for his trouble. A passerby was struck on the collar by a ricocheted bullet, but it caused no damage. He was able to keep the flattened slug as a souvenir.<\/p>\n

Editor R.W. Haltom thundered, \u201cThe brutal and bloody and senseless shooting match between two negro pistol toters in this city yesterday afternoon is another instance of the beauties of the Texas pistol system. It is not sufficient that these fellows shoot and mangle each other in their murderous affrays, but innocent lives are sacrificed or endangered, and it is hazardous to walk along the streets of a civilized community, even on a peaceful sabbath afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Out in Melrose, about 20 miles east of Nacogdoches, a shotgun wedding ended up in a double homicide. Gus Skillern had seduced the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Miley, necessitating a marriage. The ceremony was held at the Miley home, after which, according to the Sentinel<\/i> account, Gus Skillern used disrespectful language toward the bride. This was rarely a good idea when weapons were within reach. Mr. Miley tried to shoot the groom with his pistol, but Skillern wisely ran out of range. Mrs. Miley then turned on Skillern\u2019s brother, Bob, as well as another attendee, Will Tutt, neither of whom were as fleet-footed. She shot and killed them both, proving that homicidal gunplay was not confined to the male gender.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Then there was Joe Bug Roquemore, a Nacogdoches denizen with a violent bent that was impressive even by the standards of the time. He coupled that with, for several years, a talent for staying out of jail. First, he shot R.L. Crain in 1898 as Crain stepped off the train in Austin. Crain was also from Nacogdoches. The Austin paper attributed the incident to a dispute over family honor. Roquemore was never charged, claiming Crain pulled his gun first. Four years later, he attacked a black Methodist preacher with a plank at the Nacogdoches train depot. Rev. N.W. Stewart lingered in a coma for two weeks before finally expiring from his injuries.<\/p>\n

The Sentinel<\/i> editor obliquely defended Joe Bug, writing the young man \u2014 he was 21 at the time \u2014 \u201cdid not wish to kill him and only struck him in resentment of an insult.\u201d A jury apparently agreed, convicting him of aggravated assault and fining Joe Bug the princely sum of $25 for killing a black preacher. Five months later, the feud with the Crain family erupted again on Main Street near the aptly named Slay Bros. Saloon. This time Dick Crain received a pair of gunshot wounds, a bystander was killed, and Joe Bug\u2019s brother was accused of the fatal shooting. Joe Bug again skated free, as did his brother.<\/p>\n

Joe Bug managed to avoid prison for another six years, despite several more shootings and cuttings \u2014 including at least two other homicides, a couple of armed robberies, and several other scraps and scrapes. At times he was actually employed as a law officer, reinforcing a common complaint that sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between men wearing a badge and and those on the other side of the law. Joe Bug finally high-tailed it to California while out on appeal bond for murder, where once again he was arrested, this time for killing someone over a poker-game dispute. He ended up in San Quentin prison, where he languished a decade before being pardoned by the governor.<\/p>\n

After prison, Joe Bug returned home and settled down. He lived out his last days working in a saloon across the Attoyac River in San Augustine County. In 1937, at age 56, his body broken down by alcohol and physical abuse, Joe Bug died in a back storage room of the saloon. Dr. Stephen Tucker, who treated patients in the area for more than 50 years, went to see the old criminal as Joe Bug was about to expire. Tucker said that Joe Bug told him, \u201cDoc, I\u2019ve lived a wild life. I\u2019ve broken every law on the books, both man\u2019s and God\u2019s. So there\u2019s no need to call a preacher. And at my funeral tell \u2018em to say no words over me.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely anyone did.<\/p>\n

|\u2014\u2014\u2014|<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So it went for years, newspapers lamenting lack of enforcement of laws against carrying pistols and failed attempts to strengthen the laws, candidates running on the promise of making it a felony, <\/b>though bills attempting to do so went nowhere. The few feeble attempts at enforcement were hailed, such as when Bexar County Judge Shook was called a crusader for fining gun toters $100 and sentencing offenders to fifteen days in jail. Judge Shook even sent \u201cpistol toting deputies\u201d to jail. Those who couldn\u2019t pay the fine had to work out on the county road gang for 230 days. But clearly the San Antonio judge was an exception to enforcing the state\u2019s gun laws.<\/p>\n

As Thomas Clark put it in his classic study of the country newspaper for \u201cThe Journal of Southern History\u201d:<\/p>\n

Editors crusaded continuously against the pistol, but back of their crusading they knew there were many reasons for their prevalence of violence. Frontier conditions, antiquated forms of county government, fixed juries, lawyers who were shrewd at circumventing the law rather than seeking justice, spineless judges, illiterate justices of the peace, and politically minded governors who granted pardons promiscuously because they thought more of the results at the ballot box than well-ordered state social systems \u2014 all of these were effective barriers athwart the paths of conscientious editors.<\/p>\n

|\u2014\u2014\u2014|<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Finally, in May 1907, the Legislature did act in surprising fashion. But instead of making carrying a pistol a felony, which is what editorialists continually advocated, that august body slapped a strangling 50-percent tax on the gross receipt sales of pistols in the state. Gov. Tom Campbell signed it into law. There is little doubt the aim was to, if not end, at least greatly reduce the sale of pistols within Texas. As the Dallas News<\/i> wrote, in summarizing the 30th<\/sup> Legislature\u2019s gross receipts tax bill at the close of the session, the pistol sales tax \u201ccan scarcely be regarded as showing so much a desire to get revenue as a wish to destroy the gun trade.\u201d<\/p>\n

State Rep. Jess Baker of Granbury, in a letter to the editor published in the \u00a0News, <\/i>predicted the bill, which he called his \u201cespecial pet,\u201d \u00a0would cut pistol sales by 90 percent but wrote \u201cif it only cuts that sale in half, it will be of untold benefit to Texas.\u201d He forecast the hardware dealers, who sold the bulk of handguns in the state, didn\u2019t make enough profit off the business to raise the money for a legal challenge. That prognostication proved dead wrong.<\/p>\n

Not all legislators held Baker\u2019s sanguine view of the tax on pistols. State Rep. John A. Mobley of Athens, who was running for House speaker, claimed the law was unconstitutional and that its inclusion threatened the entire tax bill. He backed a special session to reverse that measure, which did not come to pass, though a court challenge indeed was mounted. It would take more than four years before the matter would be settled in court.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, people who wanted to obtain pistols legally in Texas quickly found ways to skirt the law. Hardware dealers, then a powerful lobby, began \u201crenting\u201d pistols to customers for 50 years or longer, usually for the same price it cost to buy a piece. \u00a0Or people simply ordered their guns from mail-order catalogs. That led the Athens Review <\/i>to write in exasperation that the law\u2019s framers \u201cmay not have had the gumption to see that the law would take the sale of those goods from the home merchant and transfer it to the mail order houses, but such is the case\u2026\u201d \u00a0The writer had a point, since by Dec. 31, 1908, the first full year the tax was collected, the state had garnered a mere $39.15, according to the Beaumont Journal<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The Retail Dealers\u2019 Hardware Implement and Vehicle Association by September 1907 \u2014 the month the law took effect \u2014 began raising money from its members for the court battle. The group estimated it would take about $2,000 to take the case to court. J.W. McManus, secretary of the association, was confident of victory, telling the News,<\/i> \u201cThe ablest lawyers assure us that the law is clearly unconstitutional and that it will be an easy matter to set it aside on that ground.\u201d By the next year the case had been filed.The Austin hardware company of Caswell & Smith purposely resisted paying the tax and was sued by the state. But the trial court ruled in the state\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n

Still the gun toters roamed the streets of the state.In 1908, nearly a decade after the campaign began to stop the gun-toters, the Gainesville Register<\/i> writer continued to lament, \u201cThere is no good reason why the Legislature should not make pistol-carrying a felony as it is for gambling and even lesser offenses against the public.\u201d As the Beaumont Journal<\/i> pointed out when reporting on the paltry tax collected, people were leasing revolvers for fifty years for the same price it once cost to buy one. \u201cAt any rate, there appears to be no paucity of firearms,\u201d the writer concluded.<\/p>\n

An appeal by the hardware owners of the pistol tax took four years. The case ended up in the Third Court of Civil Appeals, which in May 1912 upheld the lower court\u2019s ruling, writing that the \u201cbusiness of selling pistols may be regarded as harmful to the best interests of society, and though the statute imposes a tax, it does not lose its character as a police regulation.\u201d It further ruled that the Second Amendment is a limitation on the authority of Congress and not on the states, writing, \u201cThe act does not infringe or attempt to infringe the right of the citizens to bear arms, nor does it prohibit a dealer in the state from selling them\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court of Texas a month later declined to hear the case. The law remained on the books. The state continued to collect the tax, albeit only on the few people who actually legally bought pistols in the state. Most people continued to rent their handguns for a half-century, ordered from mail-order catalogs, or bought them from the private parties.<\/p>\n

Residents found new ways to get around gun-toting laws, which had never been strengthened in Texas despite the reams of paper and gallons of ink expended in the effort, and the oratory of dozens of legislators over the years. In 1912, a Dallas County grand jury disclosed there were 104 deputy sheriffs in the county and sixty-eight deputy constables in a single precinct. Of the deputy sheriffs, only twenty were active, and only three constables were active. The remainder, according to the Dallas News<\/i> story, were in reality licensed gun toters. The writer pointed out that if the same conditions prevailed throughout the state, then Texas had two or three regiments of licensed pistol toters who didn\u2019t actually work for a law enforcement agency. The writer urged the Legislature to end the practice in the next session. That same month, J.J. Vannoy, the Democratic nominee for the state House, said he would file yet another bill to make pistol toting a felony. Vannoy, who was assured of election in a one-party state, said, \u201cI will be glad to see the day when a barge load of pistols can be taken to sea for burial from Texas, as was done from New York under their law.\u201d<\/p>\n

|\u2014\u2014\u2014|<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It would be another nine years before a bill to repeal the 50-percent tax on pistol sales would make it out of the Legislature. By then the state comptroller had ruled that dealers had to pay the tax on pistols they \u201cleased\u201d for 99 years. By 1921 the rental period had been doubled, though it appears that dealers ignored the edict and didn\u2019t pay taxes on rented guns. Gov. Pat Neff vetoed the bill, saying it would in effect repeal the law prohibiting carrying a pistol. He advised homeowners that the \u201cbest home defender is a shotgun loaded with buckshot.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1921 the 50-percent tax on pistols sold in the state had been on the books for nearly 14 years. It had succeeded in virtually ending the legal sale of pistols in Texas, though it clearly had little effect on gun toters or people possessing pistols, for that matter. As The News<\/i> pointed out in an editorial written before Neff\u2019s veto, under the title \u201cA Law That Failed, \u201c it had the \u201ceffects of increasing the purchase of them outside the State and of creating the practice of renting them for ninety-nine years within the State.\u201d \u00a0The writer called the law, \u201can example of worthy impulse gone wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Incredibly, the 50-percent tax on guns stayed on the books for another decade. By 1931, the News<\/i> reported that State Auditor Moore Lynn had determined not a single in-state wholesale or retail auditor had reported a pistol sale since 1927. Records dating back to 1907, when the levy was first passed, showed only one year in which more than two companies had paid taxes on pistols sold, the auditor reported.<\/p>\n

By 1931, at least in Dallas, the popular way to skirt the law was for dealers to require a \u201cdeposit\u201d equal to the value of the gun. Fifty cents a day was then deducted until the deposit was exhausted. Then the person who \u201crented\u201d the gun conveniently neglected to take the weapon back, and the dealer forgot who rented the pistol, as the News<\/i> put it.<\/p>\n

Finally, on May 29, 1931, House Bill 514 was passed, repealing the tax on pistols and replacing it with a $10 occupation tax on dealers. Gov. Ross Sterling signed the bill, repealing the tax nearly a quarter century after it had become law. Bills to make it a felony to carry a pistol never did get through the Legislature despite a number of attempts. As late as 1930, Edgar R. Smith announced his candidacy for the state House and vowed he would carry a bill to make gun toting a felony if elected.<\/p>\n

|\u2014\u2014\u2014|<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In early May during the 2013 Texas legislative session \u2014 while 75,000 people attended the National Rifle Association convention in Houston \u2014a dozen bills related to guns passed the Texas House on voice vote during a single day, nearly all over the objections to the Democratic minority. Several measures made it easier to receive a concealed handgun license \u2014 to become a modern-day gun toter\u00a0 \u2014 while another established a school marshal program modeled after the federal air marshal program. Another measure passed that would penalize local governments that tried to enforce any federal weapons bans \u2014 not that any have passed. That prompted a Houston Democrat and former prosecutor to Tweet: \u201cIn case your head is too thick to understand: State law will not trump federal law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House also passed a bill allowing students older than 21 with a concealed carry permit to carry guns on campus, but that bill died in the state Senate. A bill that allowed students to keep handguns in their vehicles on campus parking lots did make it into law. Meanwhile, several school districts across the state have approved allowing teachers with concealed handgun licenses to receive additional training and keep handguns in their classrooms.<\/p>\n

It certainly is a lot easier to legally be a gun toter in Texas these days.<\/p>\n

Note on sources: The Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel was accessed on microfilm. The other newspaper articles were accessed digitally primarily through the Dallas Morning News historical digital archives. The News often published lengthy excerpts from other Texas newspapers. A few of the articles came from The New York Times historical archives.<\/i><\/p>\n

Print this entry<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Print this entryThe Gun Toters By Gary B. Borders \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Texas has a richly deserved reputation as a gun-toting state. In the months following the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tales"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}