[ravenwolf]

I don’t think there was much socialist thought in this country in the 1870s.

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people most likely did not think of them selves as being socialist but it is pretty evident that some people
did believe in the socialist ideals long before 1870.

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Benjamin Franklin quotes.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

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Franklin said those things in spite of the fact that he also had socialist views on some things, for instance, government funded hospitals, free of charge health care.

[TigersEye]

True but that’s irrelevant to the genesis of gun control. It is very well established that the first gun control laws were made specifically to keep freed slaves from owning guns so they couldn’t fight back against the KKK.