Even in the 1800s, there were gun laws, including towns in the wild, wild West. We are one really fucked up country.

Be assured that I won’t time travel back to those days to look for the one person who can falsify your final sentence. [grin]

"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."

• Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28, January 10, 1788

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."

• Tench Coxe, Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789