A FAREWELL TO ARMS
How cities of the past have tried to reduce crime by keeping swords, daggers and guns off the streets,
How societies from Rome to the not-so-wild west have curbed knife and gun violence The shocking murder of two television journalists on air has once again brought gun control to the forefront of American political debate. In the wake of last week’s shootings in Virginia, the father of slain reporter Alison Parker made an emotional public appeal to President Barack Obama to toughen the laws.
“Mr. President, you need to do this,” said Andy Parker.
Swearing to devote the rest of his life to the fight for stricter gun measures, Parker acknowledged how daunting the task will be.
The pro-gun lobby often portrays such measures as unprecedented incursions on basic rights, but history shows that weapons control efforts stretch back thousands of years, and have met with success in various parts of the world.
Battle of the blades
Weapons were forbidden in an area of ancient Rome called the Pomerium, believed to be sacred to the gods. The urban cohorts that policed the streets found the ban reduced the potential for violence in at least one part of a city where poverty and unemployment led to a high crime rate. Criminals might hide daggers in their clothing, but punishment for those who were caught was harsh. Julius Caesar was assassinated in Pompey’s Theatre, outside the Pomerium, where the regulation didn’t apply.
Cloak-and-dagger moves
According to Jeffrey L. Singman, author of Daily Life in Elizabethan Eng
land, towns in that era were patrolled by the Watch — a precursor to the police — but people still had to protect themselves from footpads (muggers), draw-latches (burglars) and cutpurses (pickpockets).
Wealthy gentlemen wore swords; commoners carried daggers. Thugs, robbers and paid assassins sought advantage by carrying longer blades.
The lethal weapons were soon in the hands of carousing students and rival gangs that clashed like Shakespeare’s Montagues and Capulets.
To curb the violence, Queen Elizabeth I issued an edict limiting the lengths of blades to 12 inches for daggers and 36 inches for swords. Longer blades, she said, were not made for self-defence, but for murder, and were a threat to the peace of the realm.
Anyone caught with an illegal weapon was arrested and had it seized and broken on the spot.
Duelling dilemmas
Bandit gangs virtually ruled the streets of 17th-century Paris, Andrew Hussey writes in Paris: The Secret
History. The bailiffs who were responsible for law and order were little more than thugs themselves. Residents fortified their homes, and no one dared venture outdoors without weapons. Then King Louis XIV appointed Nicolas de la Reynie as the city’s lieutenant general of police. De la Reynie founded Europe’s first modern urban police department. His constables cleaned up the gangs and made it safe for citizens to walk the streets unarmed.
But de la Reynie infuriated the aristocracy when he cracked down on duelling, an often fatal custom that had long been a source of escalating violence. Noblemen insisted that they had a God-given right to settle disputes with swords or pistols on the field of honour, and challenged de la Reynie’s interference with di- vine will. They were further angered when he banned all weapons from Paris theatres. The nobles argued their status put them above such regulations. With the king backing him, de la Reynie stood firm. There were courts for people to settle their differences, and the only weapons allowed in theatres were actors’ props.
The mild west
The American Old West wasn’t the wild place of popular mythology. The facts can be found in the three-volume Authentic Wild West series by James D. Horan. Only a handful of western communities ever saw a gunfight, and few men actually walked around wearing gun belts. That was because almost every town had a bylaw against the carrying of firearms. Those laws were strictly enforced by legendary lawmen such as Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, as well as the hundreds of unsung sheriffs and mar- shals who were responsible for public safety. The idea that every man carried his own law on his hip came out of Hollywood. The wandering gunslingers who have been romanticized in movies and TV shows were regarded by the people of their own time as riff-raff.
Townspeople didn’t want drunken cowboys disturbing the peace and creating a hazard by firing guns in the air. After all, bullets had to come down somewhere. For the lawmen, gun control was crucial to survival. Their most dangerous task wasn’t facing notorious outlaws such as Jesse James and Billy the Kid; it was disarming drunks. Bat Masterson’s brother Ed and U.S. Marshal Bill Tilghman were just two of many lawmen killed trying to take guns away from intoxicated troublemakers.