There was a time in recent American history when the political debate around gun control was reversed, with Republican politicians arguing for restrictions on sale and ownership, with Democrats opposing it as infringement on civil rights. Because the Constitution itself is vague on the matter, stating only “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” interpretations usually coalesced around more concrete issues.

On this day, September 15, in 1966, the Democrat President Lyndon Baines Johnson wrote a letter to congress urging the passage of gun control legislation.

LBJ was responding to a sniper attack six weeks earlier at the University of Austin. Charles Whitman, a deranged gunman, murdered his family and then climbed the observation tower at the university’s administration center and began a shooting spree that killed 14 people and wounded 32. LBJ’s gun control legislation, passed two years later, limited the interstate transfers of firearms to only licensed manufacturers, dealers and importers.