28 "Outlawed" Self-Defense Weapons Every Mountain Man Strapped to His Belt.

In 1837, one knife became so feared that Alabama taxed it at one hundred dollars, roughly twenty-six hundred dollars today, and ruled that any man who killed with it was guilty of murder, not manslaughter. That same year, the Speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives drew a Bowie knife on the floor of the assembly and stabbed a fellow lawmaker to death. The men writing the laws against the blade were killing each other with it. This is the story of the 28 "outlawed" self-defense weapons a mountain man strapped to his belt, and of the young country that, within a single lifetime, made nearly every one of them illegal. They crossed the Rockies armed to the teeth: knives along the front, a pistol through the sash, a hatchet at the hip, a weighted cord coiled in a pouch. Why? Because a single-shot rifle left a man defenseless for the longest minute of his life, and out there, the law could not reach him in time. From the silent rawhide sling at number 28 to the legendary Bowie knife at number 1, this countdown separates documented history from frontier myth. A few things you will learn that almost every other telling gets wrong: The famous rifle whose real founding date the textbooks have backwards. The crude six-shot pistol that outsold Colt for nearly a decade. The little pocket pistol that killed a president, built by a maker whose own name was stolen from him. The most feared blade in America, which began life as little more than a butcher knife. But here is the twist the romance always leaves out. The same industrializing America that manufactured these weapons in real factories, with real precision, also built the machinery that banned them, tax by tax and statute by statute. Two ledgers: the trapper's belt, and the law book. Stay to the end to find out which single weapon launched more legislation than any other in American history, and why the lawmakers who feared it most had watched it used inside their own statehouse. Every claim in this video was checked against primary statutes and the leading historians of the subject. Sources are listed below. If you enjoy the history the rest of the world has chosen to forget, subscribe, and tell us in the comments: which of the 28 would you carry into the Rockies in 1830? SOURCES & FURTHER READING: Norm Flayderman, "The Bowie Knife: Unsheathing an American Legend" (Andrew Mowbray Publishers, 2004) — on the Sandbar Fight and the myth versus the reality of the Bowie knife. Charles E. Hanson Jr. and the "Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly," Museum of the Fur Trade, Chadron, Nebraska — on the Hawken rifle and the firearms of the fur trade. furtrade.org Saul Cornell, "A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America" (Oxford University Press, 2006) — on the long American tradition of arms regulation. David B. Kopel — legal-history research on nineteenth-century Bowie-knife and edged-weapon statutes. Duke Center for Firearms Law, "Repository of Historical Gun Laws" — a searchable database of historical weapon laws. firearmslaw.duke.edu Encyclopedia of Arkansas — entries on John Wilson and the 1837 killing on the House floor. encyclopediaofarkansas.net Mark Twain, "Roughing It" (1872, public domain) — the firsthand account of the Allen pepperbox. Primary statutes referenced: Alabama (1837), Tennessee (1838), Texas (1871). Disclaimer: This channel explores the history, design, law, and culture of antique and obsolete arms for educational purposes only. Nothing in this video is instructional. Always follow the firearm and knife laws in your own jurisdiction. #MountainMen #FrontierWeapons #OldWest #BowieKnife #AmericanHistory #WildWest #FurTrade #HistoryDocumentary #HawkenRifle #FrontierHistory #WeaponsHistory #AmericanFrontier #19thCentury #GunHistory #KnifeHistory