After the Page Trial, Seattle Asks Why Every Man Carries a Revolver
An editorial demands an end to the city's gun-carrying habit, arguing that petty disputes end in bloodshed because half the town is a walking arsenal.
One result of the Page trial should be to bring to the attention of the public the dangers arising from the alarmingly common practice of carrying firearms. It is an anomaly of nineteenth century civilization that in times of profound peace and in a Christian community a man should make of himself a walking arsenal. In the streets of Seattle there should be no more necessity for carrying a revolver than a pitchfork. There are occasions, perhaps, when it may be all right for the ordinary citizen to go armed, as on returning home at night or when by circumstances he is thrown with lawless characters, but this idea that one is not safe without a six-shooter always in his hip pocket is ridiculous. It is getting so now that the youth of the day will no sooner get into long trousers than he will feel under the necessity of buying a "gun." All our dead-game sports, loafers and toughs go armed, and if a man hasn't "pulled his gun" on somebody, why he is no sort of a fellow at all. The result of this nonsensical and absolutely vicious practice is that nearly every difference of opinion, petty dispute or common brawl is terminated by one party whipping out a revolver and pouring more or less lead into the other. If it were made a crime with heavy punishment for one to constantly carry concealed weapons and a few of these brave men with an aching to get at their hip pockets were summarily dealt with and compelled to carry hods instead of Smith Wessons, no doubt the moral tone of the community would be better and there would be fewer unnecessary "shooting scrapes" and homicides. But so long as public sentiment tolerates this gun-carrying folly just so long will life be less secure and the recurrence of Page affairs something to be expected at any time.
“In the streets of Seattle there should be no more necessity for carrying a revolver than a pitchfork.”
The Page trial gave Seattle's editors a pulpit to argue that a city at peace should not be a city of armed men — and that concealed carry was a public danger, not a right. More than a century later, Washington debates open-carry, concealed permits and gun violence in its streets in almost the same terms, though the politics have reversed. The complaint that young men buy a gun the moment they buy long trousers could be lifted from a modern op-ed.
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