Civilian Patrols

[mmc45414]

Ohio was pretty stupid in that regard.

It sure was.

IIRC, the rule was it was permissible to carry a gun if a prudent man would have armed himself.

It was technically still illegal, just that prudence could be used as a defense. Bob would know better, but I think in practice it just meant that people wouldn't get arrested if they were being prudent, like packing while carrying a lotta cash.

[BehindBlueI's]

So, you are probably right about the 1950's not being as wonderful as they were made out to be. I wasn't around then, so I can't say for sure. I think what we can say for sure is that every society, at any given time, has its fair share of buttholes walking around - the 1950's included. I guess the question I would pose is, would you feel better about your loved one walking down the street alone at night in Big City/Small Town U.S.A. in the 50's or right now?

Is my loved one white?

Do they go the right church?

Would they potentially fall under 'vagrancy' laws of the era?

Does this hypothetical city allow carry of concealed weapons today and/or then?

[BobM]

Ohio was pretty stupid in that regard. IIRC, the rule was it was permissible to carry a gun if a prudent man would have armed himself.

A friend carried a Sig P230 in .380. She had an active order of protection against an ex who worked in the next building over. I asked her once about the gun when I caught a glimpse of it in her bag. She said she'd rather have to deal with the cops than the coroner.

It was an affirmative defense one could use if charged, putting the burden of proof on the defendant.
As a practical matter, most of the cops figured it was prudent for a pharmacist to have a gun. I also knew at least one convenience store manager who kept a gun in her purse especially when making deposits.

[Dog Face Gremlin]

In Newark, New Jersey, Anthony Imperiale's Armed North Ward Protection League kept the City's Little Italy from being burned down by rioters in the 1967 Newark Riots. Italian American Newarkers to this day miss Anthony Imperiale's patrols. He was Curtis Sliwa's inspiration for establishing the Guardian Angels.

How are you familiar with that.....I was there, worked the south district......do ya know what happened to the young fella that knocked Anthony's elderly mother down in the street wrenched her arm and stole her purse.....no that's a story.

[Stephanie B]

How are you familiar with that.....I was there, worked the south district......do ya know what happened to the young fella that knocked Anthony's elderly mother down in the street wrenched her arm and stole her purse.....no that's a story.

Meadowlands? Pine Barrens? Oil drum?

[Dog Face Gremlin]

None of the above......he put the word out on the street for the perp to come in and not make Anthony look for him....he did at an arranged meeting where both his hand were put flat on a table and his knuckles smashed with a ballpene hammer....then he was dumped at the local precinct.....remember Anthony saying....this guy will never rob somebodies mother's purse again.......Street Justice delivered.

[Borderland]

But I suspect in the U.S. population at large, this specialization/farming out of things is real.

I think it has to do with the service economy these days. Very few people prepare all of their meals at home anymore. Buying a pizza or stopping at McDonalds is just easier. Back in the last century everyone working with me brought their lunch to work. Then the new hires needed to stop to buy lunch on the way to the job site. Or some of them even wanted to go for take out at noon which got a hard no.

We just purchased a new dishwasher and had it installed. We purchased it from a business that includes installation in the price. I don't know how much extra that cost but the old one was removed in the install. I watched the installer do it and realized there wasn't really that much to it. The manual came with good installation instructions. Except it shut down 2 days after the install. Had to call them back to come and fix it. Turns out the DW knew there was a minor hose leak and it shut down. Next guy knew exactly what the problem was by the code and had it back up in 20 minutes. Someone had to tell the DW it was fixed and it could wash dishes again.

I remodeled both bathrooms four years ago replacing the old floors and vanities. That was 10x more work than installing a DW. Maybe that's why I just let the pros do the heavy lifting these days. I'm not into saving a few bucks for something like appliances or auto maintenance. I did change the blades on my riding mower a few days ago however. Neighbor has a vehicle lift in his shop. We probably spent more time reminiscing about the old days when we actually had jobs than working on the mower.

[Cheap Shot]

Is my loved one white?

Do they go the right church?

Would they potentially fall under 'vagrancy' laws of the era?

Does this hypothetical city allow carry of concealed weapons today and/or then?

Please share your experiences from the 1950"s

[DDTSGM]

So, you are probably right about the 1950's not being as wonderful as they were made out to be. I wasn't around then, so I can't say for sure. I think what we can say for sure is that every society, at any given time, has its fair share of buttholes walking around - the 1950's included. I guess the question I would pose is, would you feel better about your loved one walking down the street alone at night in Big City/Small Town U.S.A. in the 50's or right now? It seems that *on the whole* things were more stable and just better, than they are right now. For sure, there are a ton of factors at play in this, not just the veterans that were and are present. It sure feels like things started to slide in the 1960's and have trended downward since then. One glaring example of that, as noted upthread, is that now a defender not only has to deal with the "street fight", but there is a good likelihood that same defender will then have to fight again in court. I don't think that was as much of a concern in the 1950's.

RE: your last sentence... I know more than a handful of people who, at least say, they are willing to "take responsibility for their own safety" and I take some comfort in that. But again, I don't see how the idea of gun control becomes a thing without a good many people abdicating the responsibility for their own safety. When golf is far and away a more popular pasttime than the shooting sports, well, you're going to get the society we have right now, which, in my opinion, isn't great. I say we convert all the golf courses into shooting ranges and make America great, again... (seriously).

A lot to unpack when comparing then and now. One of the things we often forget is how inter-connected we all are now - things that used to take several days or weeks to filter across regions are now almost instantly shared - the amber alerts are just one example. So, as a result we are more conscious of occurrences.

Here's the homicide rate from 1950 up:



When looking for crime info from the 50's I came across several interesting comparisons between life in the 50's and now. This one caught me because the writer mentions how her mom worked her rear end off. I've often remembered how hard my mom worked at being a mom, much harder than a stay at home mom today:

Why is American life so much harder than it was in the 50s and 60s?

It isn’t.

We were lower-to-middle class. Dad was part of the NYPD; mom was a housewife. Dad also washed pots and pans in a bakery for extra money. He turned the upstairs in our small house into an apartment so we could get the rent. Six kids. My folks worked like dogs. I’ll never forget my mother hanging out sheets and towels and jeans on the clothesline in the freezing cold, then standing them near a radiator to thaw out. She ironed tons of clothes every day in the sweltering basement. No a/c. She cooked from scratch three times a day for eight people; no microwave. Then we did dishes. No dishwasher. The kentile floors got scrubbed and waxed every Saturday night.

My mom and dad would buy bushels of apples and peaches and pears and can them. It was a tedious, grueling job, but we got to eat them all year till we were so sick of them that we could scream. By the time they were 10, my two older brothers combined delivered three hundred newspapers a day, in the cold, the heat, the rain and the snow. They also shined shoes, carried groceries home for old ladies for ten cent tips, and collected bottles to redeem. I was babysitting every week by the time I was 10.

But we thought we were the rich kids, the lucky kids. We lived in our own house. Our shoes fit us. We knew lots of kids who really had it tough; kids whose dads had died in the war; kids with drunk moms or dads; kids with 11 siblings and no moms anymore; kids who couldn’t see three feet away but couldn’t afford eyeglasses; kids who lived in apartments with newspapers instead of glass for windows. There was no welfare for those kids; no section 8; no food stamps. Just clothes they got from kind neighbors whose kids had outgrown them. Just some free food from the church once in a while. And our world was very small. What happened two neighborhoods away might just as well have happened on Mars, so we could believe the world was a tough but good place to be.

Are things harder now with microwaves and dishwashers, TVs in every room, and cars for everybody? Yes, a HELL OF A LOT harder. No one today ever makes enough or has enough. Everybody feels sorry for himself or herself. Everyone analyzes their lives and always finds something lacking. By today’s standards, it would be inhumane to live the way millions of us lived. Most people are still kind and decent, but thanks to the internet, we hear about all the cruelty, starvation, violence and insanity in every corner of the world. We hear every lunatic’s rants, every serial killer’s manifesto, every war, skirmish, every act of bigotry, of infanticide, of rape, murder and suicide an hour after it happens. We spend our time grieving, arguing, and fighting each other not to drown in the sea of inhumanity we seem to be swimming in. Are things better now? Not to this child of the ‘50s. It wasn’t so good back then. It’s just worse now.


And this one, by a career teacher caught my eye. I don't know when it was written, he mentions going to a Starbucks in Seattle at a time when it didn't have a crime problem, but some facts and well-founded opinions:

There was crime in the 1950s. Just less of it, both in whole numbers and percentages. Why it has increased dramatically since 1965 will include answers that include both opinions and facts.

Fact: the population increase between 1950 and 1960 was the largest increase in the population of the United States in its history. The “baby boom” led us to become a nation that reached 200 million people by 1967 or 1968. Since then, in increments, it has grown to approximately 350 million in the last 55 years. But the increase between 1950 and 1960, with the highest number of new births being in 1956, was the largest increase this country has seen. Vaccinations, improvements in prenatal care allowed couples to be able to have more children, as both the mother and the newborn came out of the childbirth both relatively healthy.

I’m not saying the “boomers,” themselves, mind you. I’m pointing out the numbers, alone. That leaves a country susceptible to many changes, both good and bad. The good being more college graduates; the bad being more crime. It’s a “numbers game,” like I mentioned. So, as the increase in members of the middle class grew, so did the members of all classes. ALL races and ethnic groups had more children. Wealthy, middle class, and impoverished families had more children and the population grew and grew.

People who started a career as a public school teacher in 1959, who would be honest, and retired after 30 years in 1989, would point out the differences in the atmosphere in school buildings and classrooms over this time. An educated immigrant from Guyana, Central America said that the “public schools in Guyana are similar to the private schools in the United States.” Meaning that in those schools in their native country, a student would not even think of telling a teacher to go F#@## themselves. Students wouldn’t even think of having a brawl, or even one to one fights. Teachers who started their career in more simple times have openly stated that they would not “go into” that same field after the spike in the crime rate, including crimes in schools, skyrocketed. By 1991, three public high schools in NYC had metal detectors to try and prevent students from trying to enter the building with guns and/or knives. 1991 was 10 years before the 2001 terrorist bombings and the airports had extensive metal detector and bomb detectors.

Late football coach Vince Lombardi, who was a Democrat and believed in non-violent protest, said to a colleague of his in 1966 “I (Lombardi) get the feeling that a lot of people simply don’t want to be held accountable for their actions.” Meaning that people, including criminals, just wanted to do whatever they pleased and then whine if/when they were caught. As though, “the devil” made them do it. Or, if there are family members who are/were career criminals, might not even complain when caught since living in prison was a “way of life” for their families.

Not too long ago, I was charging my phone in a Starbucks in Seattle. (Seattle does not have a violent crime rate. However, it is home to a couple of universities and it is an expensive city, so theft is higher than the national average) So, as I got up to go to the counter, this man went right to my phone and pulled it out of the outlet. I walked up right behind him and asked “can I help you?” He quickly handed me the phone and tried to mouse his way out of the situation with some lame excuse. I just ignored his response, by giving a neutral response. I knew that could happen, so as soon as I left the phone briefly unattended, I turned around and caught the guy. Others in that neighborhood actually had their stuff stolen. Usually for drug money. Drugs did exist before the 1960s, but not nearly to the extent that they have existed in our society since then.

So, I’ll just list those three possible reasons: increase in population, lack of accountability and drugs. And, despite some occasional setbacks, the economy during the 1950s was pretty stable. Since the era of the Vietnam War, the economy has gone through dramatic changes. And these changes cannot be ignored..

[Joe in PNG]

Is my loved one white?
Do they go the right church?
Would they potentially fall under 'vagrancy' laws of the era?
Does this hypothetical city allow carry of concealed weapons today and/or then?

We tend to look back on the past with rose colored glasses. But as Solomon noted, Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?” For it is not wise to ask such questions.


For instance, some family history. My great-grandfather was murdered by a tenant in Arcadia about a century ago. My grandma- who was married, white & Christian BTW- got manhandled on a fairground ride by the notorious Lake Co FL Sheriff Willis McCall back in the Good Old Days. The same High Sheriff who helped to frame a mentally challenged youth for the rape of the wife of a prominent businessman- because that businessman didn't want people to know she was assaulted by a black person.