Guns and Members, When Congress Protected Itself

Roll Call ^ | May 13, 2015 | John Bicknell

[HammerT]

Before there were Capitol Police to protect Congress (and leave their guns stashed in bathrooms), lawmakers tended to their own security — and their own weaponry.

And through much of the first half of the 19th century, whenever political tensions began to run high, guns were likely to appear on the hips of members.

Jonathan Cilley, a member of the House from Maine, was killed in a duel by Kentucky Rep. William J. Graves in February 1838 over a dispute involving a bribery accusation Cilley made on the House floor.

During the heated debate over the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, a fight broke out between two members from Tennessee — William Churchwell and William Cullom — with Cullom leaping at his colleague and Churchwell drawing a pistol to defend himself. Another member grabbed the gun away, averting a disaster.

In response, South Carolina Rep. Preston Brooks proposed — in jest, or at least that’s what most people thought — that members of Congress should be required to check their firearms in the cloakroom before being allowed to enter the chamber.

This was a matter of honor, Brooks pointed out. If you’re going to start a fight, be enough of a man to deal with your opponent without the aid of a firearm, the carrying of which onto the House floor he called an “unmanly and pernicious habit.”

Brooks’ proposal was “greeted with much applause and laughter.”

Brooks would gain fame not for use of a pistol, but for use of cane, when he attacked Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate with his walking stick in response to Sumner’s May 1856 “Crime Against Kansas” speech, which Brooks said impugned the honor of his cousin, Sen. Andrew Butler.

[HammerT]

Think about it, before our esteemed ‘Legislators’ vaulted themselves into being the elite and virtual royalty and ‘Too big to Jail’..

They actually defended themselves as we (the great unwashed) do today.

Aren't we sooooooo much better than our betters in the feral government don't have to trifle themselves with protect themselves via the Common Sense CIVIL Right of armed self defense.

Don't you sleep better at night, knowing that they are above having make the effort and expense of protecting themselves and can do so with YOUR money taken at gunpoint?

Think of it, we have the DC royalty who can easily pontificate over the rights of the Hoi paloi while not having to do the same, making it so much easier to deprive the little people of rights they cannot comprehend.

[Leaving off the /sarc. tag to help reduce my carbon footy print and do my part in saving momma gaia