So Flo Guns – The Modern Era – Winchesters, Tommy Guns, Mac-10’s, Regulations, and the NRA

By Steve Richards

​So Flo Guns is organized chronologically in three parts with the Musket Ball Era first focusing on the time from 1513 through the Civil War in 1865 and represented by a musket ball found on Key Biscayne (See The Oldest South Florida Gun Relic (theoeco.org)). A musket ball like those used by Ponce DeLeon and Spanish Conquistadors, pirates, Seminoles, soldiers, and South Florida’s earliest pioneers.

Towards the end of that era we find the Savage Navy Revolver in the Key West Museum of Art & History at the Custom House. It represents a kind of mutation in the evolution of gun tech and lethalness as we move into the unheard of carnage of the Civil War battlefields enabled by Minie’ Balls and percussion cap rifled muskets– and new firearms available to civilians.

​Personally, I think of guns as a kind of human made ecology. One not unlike water in that it is everywhere, can be very beneficial, and also kill you. It is also something that we try to control. In the USA this begins with the 2nd Amendment, continues on through the National Firearms Act in the 1930’s, on up to the regulatory environment – and the raging gun debates about them - of today.

Seen in that light we can use environmental/biological metaphors to talk about our evolving gun environment as we move forward into So Flo Guns’ Modern Era; that time from the Civil War through the Cocaine Cowboy days.

Specifically we are talking about repeating arms, and their enabling technologies like interchangeable parts and other innovations of the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps foremost of these being smokeless gun powder which allowed repeaters with all their moving parts to avoid being fouled by black powder residue.

“Smokeless powder made autoloading firearms with many moving parts feasible (which would otherwise jam or seize under heavy black powder fouling). Smokeless powder allowed the development of modern semi- and fully automatic firearms and lighter breeches and barrels for artillery.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_powder

Winchester 1892 like that used by John Wayne in The Searchers

Repeating rifles represented an awesome increase in firepower over their predecessors. They would not have been possible without new technologies and advances in industrial production out of New Haven where Winchesters (and cotton gins) were made. The Winchester Model 1892 found in the Richard and Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum represents a prime artifact of the evolving South Florida gun environment of the time as the notorious Ashley Gang of the time epitomized. 

​The period is a colorful and increasing lethal time in our gun history memorialized in countless movies including westerns, gangster, and contemporary action flicks. Each of these genres feature guns that evolve markedly with lever-action rifles like the Winchester featured in John Wayne’s The Searchers, to Thompson sub-machine guns aka ‘Tommy Guns” in films like Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, to Uzi’s and Mac-10’s in Scarface.

---

Thompson Sub-Machine Gun in violin case like that associated with gangland figures like AL Capone.

​What do Al Capone and Tommy Guns have to do with South Florida you might ask? Well, turns out that the St, Valentine’s Day Massacre was purportedly planned and ordered from Scarface’s Miami Beach Home in 1929. 

Al Capone's House on Palm Island

Not surprisingly these advances also led to a perplexing mix of developments in the regulation of our increasingly lethal civilian arsenal while also advancing and promoting their distribution. During this time we see the incorporation of a far different purposed NRA in 1871. Next we see the National Firearms Act in 1934 get control over the Gangland weapons used by Al Capone and his ilk. National Firearms Act | Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (atf.gov).
​
​What counts as a controlled firearm? Check out the list on the ATF website. It includes machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, silencers, grenades, bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, artillery shells, etc. Even some of their parts are regulated destructive devices, not least of which are those that convert AR-15’s to fully automatic. It demonstrates that we lost most of our gun rights long ago. Which likely explains, in addition to the economic motivators of suppliers, that we struggle so mightily to keep those we still have.

---

MAC-10 like those used by Cocaine Cowboys.

​So Flo Guns will focus on all of these developments as we ultimately track the evolution of our gun environment into the Parkland Era of today as we tell the story of guns in South Florida and the nation.