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If you were born around 1950 or earlier, you may recall going into your local Western Auto store and being able to handle all the guns, because they were all in readily accessible racks. At least that is the way it was in Douglas, Georgia.
If a lad decided he wanted a box of .22’s, he could go into that store or Lott’s hardware, as well as a host of others and get that ammo.
Mail-ordering guns was just a thing back then, too. Call, or go down to the local Sears catalog store, and order that Winchester or Marlin, or a plain-vanilla model with the J. C. Higgins label on it.
That was a simpler time.
Of course you could also get a Vespa Scooter with the Allstate label on it. But I digress.
Unfortunately, a perfect storm of assassinations, JFK in 1963, and MLK and RFK in 1968, provided statist politicians with the golden opportunity to ram through the Gun Control Act of 1968.
How did that play out in the early days? Teenagers who had been buying ammo for the last decade were carded for ammo purchases. Seventeen year-olds could no longer buy that box of .22’s. They had to get someone else to make the purchase.