The small, inexpensive pocket handgun has a long history in the United States, though it has lately come upon hard times. Exasmples of small flintlock pistols imported from Belgium or France are still to be found, and the later screw-barrel percussion pistols in wide use till the 1860's are fairly common. The Philadelphia Deringer percussion pistols had many imitators, and gave its makers name to an entire class of small concealable pistols. Early Model Smith & Wesson revolvers were pocket size tip-up frame guns in small rimfire calibers. Many were carried in the Civil War as personal weapons by those able to afford them. Colt mand various sizes of cartridge pocket pistols, as did Merwin Hulbert, Remington, and others. The Top Break type of tevolver began in the 1880's, made by S&W, but also by Iver Johnson, Harrington & Richardson, Meriden, Forehand & Wadsworth, and many others. They were small, pocket revolvers used by working people for protection in a not quite civilized country. Many models remained in production till the outbreak of WWII, and many can still be found in working condition. Small pocket pistols manufactured today are the modern version of these old American guns. They can provide inexpensive security for many in a still not-quite civilized country. Small auto loading pistols got a bad rap from politicians seeking to score easy points with voters by blaming the gun for crime and criminals. (FWIW, it still amazes me that we have Congress investigating baseball players, but not doing anything about our real problems.) Dogngun
Myth Busting The Gun Snobs[]
I thought I would get the ball rolling by starting this page. ~~Mr Saturday Night Special 17:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
"To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you're putting a money test on getting a gun. It's racism in its worst form." -- Roy Innis, president of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 1988
Saturday Night Special is a pejorative or slang term used in the United States for any small, inexpensive handgun. The term has been thought by some students of Gun Control to incorporate the phrase "N--gertown Saturday Night", that is, a firearm meant for minorities bent on illicit behaviors. As such the term "Saturday Night Special" is implicitly bigoted and racist. "Saturday Night Special" is sometimes called an SNS in written shorthand. The term is used for its shock value in ad hominem attacks in an attempt to put "Pro-Gun" partisans on the defensive. Allegedly "Sportsmen" prefer firearms of quality and refinement, versus violent "rabble" who may view firearms as a tool of mayhem or crime, though many Rural Poor can only afford the most basic firearms of low price and fair quality.
At the very same time this appeal to "Sportsmen" conjures up images of Elitism since Sportsmen hunt and target shoot for recreation rather than survival. This appeal to Elitism creates a Class Distinction between "quality" and "shoddy" firearms and the persons who can afford them, reinforcing the notion of gun ownership as a privledge rather than a basic Civil Right. Appealing to Sportsmen marginalizes the political importance of an Armed Citizenry, translating firearms from tools of Liberty into Sporting goods.
In addition Gun Control Proponents can "justify" bans on "Saturday Night Specials" as a form of Consumer Protection since more expensive firearms would, most likely, contain mechanical safeguards that prevent accidental discharge or might be more durable, robust or rugged than these "instruments of mayhem, murder and violence".
The origins of "Gun Control" laws lend an ironic note the term "Saturday Night Special" and its racist origins, in that the first Gun Controls laws in the United States were aimed at Freed Slaves, poor whites and somewhat later poor immigrants who carried firearms in urban areas for protection.
In a profound sense a "quality test" or "price test" on Handguns and other firearms is a form of Poll Tax, an antique Tax required before casting a vote. The Poll Tax was meant to deny poor Rural people the right to vote. A ban on "Cheap Handguns" is a tax on the right of the poor to exist free of fear.
There is little doubt that the earliest gun controls in the United States were blatantly racist and elitist in their intent. San Francisco civil-liberties attorney Don B. Kates, Jr., an opponent of gun prohibitions with impeccable liberal credentials (he has been a clerk for radical lawyer William Kunstler, a civil rights activist in the South, and an Office of Economic Opportunity lawyer), describes early gun control efforts in his book Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptic Speak Out. As Kates documents, prohibitions against the sale of cheap handguns originated in the post-Civil War South. Small pistols selling for as little as 50 or 60 cents became available in the 1870s and '80s, and since they could be afforded by recently emancipated blacks and poor whites (whom agrarian agitators of the time were encouraging to ally for economic and political purposes), these guns constituted a significant threat to a southern establishment interested in maintaining the traditional structure. Gun Control: White Man's Law by William R. Tonso