William Hornaday and Gun Control

Was author, conservationist, and zoologist William T. Hornaday (1854-1937) a gun control advocate?

One might think so and make that argument as David Kopel did in the Washington Post in June 2017. You can read the story here. Basically, his argument is that because Hornaday advocated for a limitations in the use of pump and automatic shotguns and silencers for hunting, he advanced the cause of gun control. The guest host of the Thomas Jefferson Hour radio show and podcast, David Swensen, equated the shotgun regulations with gun control, although his was more a passing comment and he did not mention Hornaday. Here is a link to the show.

The introduction of pump and automatic shotguns in the first years of the twentieth century alarmed Hornaday. He was gravely concerned that Americans killed wildlife, particularly birds, exponentially, while animals reproduced arithmetically. In other words, hunters killed wild animals at a much greater rate than they could naturally reproduce. In time, Hornaday believed, we would exterminate nearly all animals, if his contemporaries did not stop the slaughter. He reckoned that would occur by 1950. Hornaday's preferred solution was to ban the use of these deadly weapons, but failing that his fall back position was to limit them to a maximum of three rounds. Hunters, including the conservationist sportsman, resisted this. Every time Hornaday went on a rant about shotguns, George Bird Grinnell dropped a dime on him to his pal Madison Grant. Yes, that Madison Grant! Notorious, Nazi-inspiring racist that he was, Grant was also a conservationist, Hornaday's boss at the Bronx Zoo, and Grinnell's friend. Finally, in 1935, after more than thirty years of Hornaday's agitation, the federal government implemented the three cartridge limit. An old and embittered Hornaday thought it was too little, too late. We still have a limit on cartridges. A plastic plug is included with any new pump shotgun purchase. You can read all about in my biography of Hornaday, The Most Defiant Devil.

I am not going to say that this isn't gun control. But, I do want to demonstrate that Hornaday's views on guns was quite complicated. In 1925 the Society for the Prevention of Crime offered a $2,500 prize for the best plan to reduce crime in New York City. Hornaday submitted his proposal on December 10, 1925 (a copy is in Hornaday's Wildlife Conservation Society papers at the Bronx Zoo). Hornaday hated Italians (he devoted a chapter in Our Vanishing Wildlife to how Italians were killing songbirds) and considered them natural criminals. He was alarmed by the growth and brazenness of organized crime in the 1920s. He was particularly concerned about the spirit of lawlessness during prohibition in New York City.

What was Hornaday's proposal? Among other things he wanted to repeal the Sullivan Law that required handgun owners to get a permit to carry their weapons concealed. Moreover, he wanted to encourage all homeowners, business owners, and any "custodian of money" to purchase a handgun. "It is utterly impossible to prevent by law, " he wrote, "or even to check, the sale of firearms and ammunition to members of the criminal classes, and it is a waste of time to attempt it." He also called for longer prison terms, penal colonies, hard labor, increased application of the death penalty, and three strikes and you are out sentencing. Hornaday urged a total overhaul of the criminal code. And, lastly, he considered the fourth and fifth amendments to the Constitution "dry rot." "They should be repealed, or otherwise nullified," he added. Going even further, he suggested that courts compel defendants to testify under oath. It should be noted be never suggested the repeal of prohibition.