158 oopsif:
This depends on what you define as the US Government. The Feds, maybe not so much.
However, at the local level, especially the area east of New Mexico and south of the Ohio river during the period of about 1870-1960, things were very much a different story, at least for some people, who, shall we say, were not connected to the local power structures.
The NRA was founded for a reason.
Since this was done by a consensus of groups across the region, who mostly worked without records or the sort of organization the Germans brought to their gun grab in the first half of the twentieth century, it is harder to substantiate this example in an internet discussion. If you don’t want to take my word for it, I am sure your local five million plus item library will have some scholarly tomes on the subject.
Some of this still goes on in the current day, in other locations, possibly for different purposes and possibly not.
