The model of gun control that emerged from the redeemed South is a model of distrust for the South's untrustworthy and unredeemed class, a class deemed both different and inferior, the class of Americans of African descent. There are indications that this model was followed elsewhere in the nation.
If the white South saw blacks as a threat, the country as a whole saw southern and eastern Europeans in similar terms. For this reason, in part, the numbers of such immigrants were subject to significant limits. Beyond this, these immigrants were associated with mental deficiency, with crime, and most dangerously, with the sort of anarchist inspired crime that was feared in Europe, such as political assassination and politically motivated robberies.
Such goals would be argued in later years with the passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934 and in the 1960s and beyond, when concerns with "Saturday Night Specials" and with "assault weapons" would take center stage. If safety concerns must be conceded, it should be recognized as well that local governments have sought to ban firearms from what is frequently considered one of today's untrustworthy and suspect classes, the urban poor.
