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Friday, July 22, 2016

The Mailing of Arms Act (1927)

This is the federal law that prohibits mailing handguns through the post office.  The Congress before it was passed debated the bill and Senator Shields (D-TN) did a Bloomberg explanation:
Fifty-three negroes killed by negroes.  Only seven negroes killed [by\ whites.  Only two whites killed by negroes--one a white burglar and the other assassinated by negro bandits....
Here we have laid bare the principal cause for the high murder rate in Memphis--the carrying by colored people of a concealed deadly weapon, most often a pistol.  Can we not cope with this situation?

All of this is on p. 3946, but I have included the whole discussion for context.  A reader points out that the word by was left out of the original.



1 comment:

  1. There seems to be an error in the transcript: "Only seven negroes killed whites..." should be "Only seven negroes killed by whites..."

    Otherwise it contradicts the next sentence: "Only two whites killed by negroes..." and also the data in the table.


    This error is in the original transcript, but ought to be corrected to avoid confusion.

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