Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt were gun-grabbing, anti-2A, big government liberals. Change my mind.
Posted in “OK Corral” instead of TV & Movies because I’m funny like that.
OK, that's easy-peasy, at least for the Second Amendment part.
The Gunfight at OK Corral happened in 1881.
The Second Amendment did not apply to except against the federal government in those days. It wasn't until after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 that incorporation started happening. In fact, before incorporation began to be a thing, it was entirely possible for people in the new territories to have LESS rights upon achieving statehood.
In fact, it was in 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified that any amendment to the U.S. Constitution was seen as also binding on the States.
The Supreme Court held that many of the Amendments under the Bill of Rights ONLY applied to the federal government for quite a number of years after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. It wasn't until the 1920s that the Supreme Court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to incorporate most (not all) of the Bill of Rights such that the States could also be held accountable to them. The process of incorporation can trace its roots as far back as 1897 with Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad v. City of Chicago.
And even with incorporation, there's partial incorporation and total incorporation. There are no less than 7 court cases which incorporate aspects of the First Amendment, for example, spanning almost 6 full decades before we could finally say the First Amendment was fully incorporated. (1925 to 1984)
1897 is 16 years after the events of the OK Corral.
And the Second Amendment has only in very recent times been fully incorporated against the States in 2008 (District of Columbia v Heller) and 2010 (McDonald v City of Chicago).
So, while they could arguably be considered to be "gun grabbing" for confiscating cowboy firearms upon entering Tombstone, firearms were returned to people upon leaving town.
They weren't anti-2A, because the Bill of Rights was only viewed legally and popularly as applying to the "big government" people feared at the time, namely the federal government.
And they weren't "big government liberals", as they were only concerned with the local government and were likely exactly the same as most everybody else with respect to how the federal government was viewed...namely as the big evil that had to be restricted.
