A sample of weaponry seized in New York Chinatown during the conflict between Hip Sing and On Leong Tongs, c. 1922. Photographer unknown (from the collection of the NYPD).

Disarming Chinese America:  The Exclusionary Politics of Gun Control

“The gun is mythic in the American imagination… . The gun in America is unique because it has defined, and will continue to define, membership and belonging in the polity.” – Prof. Pratheepan Gulaesekaram

The widespread use of guns in Chinese Americans communities has been lost to historical memory, and almost a half-century has passed since San Francisco Chinatown’s last mass shooting.  However, in the wake of a flood of news stories about the victimization by Chinese in California and elsewhere in the US – whether by hate or criminal predators – Chinese Americans have begun asking why relatively few in their communities bear arms for the protection of persons and property.  Although the acquisition of personal firearms by Asian Americans has increased, particularly in this decade of Asian hate and criminal victimization, popular consciousness generally does not associate Chinese American communities with heavy firearms usage.

Ironically, the lack of firearms in California’s Chinese communities can be traced to century-old legislation aimed at directly suppressing the Chinese community’s ownership of guns and, in a larger sense, the deepening the notion of exclusion and, specifically, Chinese exclusion, from the right to bear firearms in America.

California’s Gun Law of 1923 contained two major provisions:  (1) the requirement of a permit to carry a concealed handgun anywhere in California (and that statute is the direct ancestor of California’s current concealed weapon permit law); and (2) the prohibition of non-citizens from possessing concealable firearms.  The handgun ban by non-citizens was upheld by the California Supreme Court in the case In re Ramirez (1924) 193 C. 633.

A July 15, 1923, a San Francisco Chronicle article supported the racial dimension of the legislative intent, and at whom the legislation was directed:

As the Chronicle reported, then-Governor Richardson had approved of the Gun Law largely on the recommendation of R. T. McKissick, president of the Sacramento Rifle and Revolver Club.  Although McKissick acknowledged that banning resident aliens from owning handguns might pose a constitutional problem, McKissick indicated that ”it would have a ‘salutary effect in checking tong wars among the Chinese and vendettas among our people who are of Latin descent.’”

By invoking the specter of tong violence, the proponents of the law had invoked seven decades’ worth of fears by the white population of armed Chinese in California and throughout the American West.

The field of historical archaeology may lead to the revision of the stereotypical view of early Chinese communities as meek and victims, usually of white racist violence.  The stereotype, however, has always been undermined by contemporary accounts of violent gunplay by Chinese in the gold fields and other frontier towns.  Continuing excavations of old Chinese settlements by the Southern Oregon University have uncovered firearms and related accoutrements and provided evidence of Chinese use of guns to defend themselves.  

However, the relatively small, legal firearms culture in the Chinese community can be attributed to the ascendancy and use by the “hatchet boys” or 斧頭仔 (canto: “fu tau jai”) of pistols, among other concealable weaponry, for advancing tong interests and conflict resolution.

“Highbinders’ Retreat” undated photo taken in San Francisco.  Photographer unknown (from the Cooper Chow collection at the Chinese Historical Society of America).

The early gun control laws in California reflected the white community’s desire for safety from, and control over, the use of lethal force by nonwhites in their midst on the urban frontier. San Francisco enacted a gun control measure as early as 1847 to reduce violence. Coincident with the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment, the city singled out the Chinese as a focal point of violence for the balance of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century, particularly Chinatown’s fighting tongs.

“The Yellow Terror In All His Glory” (1899) depicted an anti-colonial Qing Dynasty Chinese man standing over a fallen white woman, who represents the Western world. The cartoon made explicit the white community’s fears of innocent white women killed by gunplay in the Chinese community.

In 1879, California first enacted legislation to prohibit non-citizens from bearing arms.  The law was fueled in major part by white perceptions of the Chinese as violent and unassimilable and thousands of lurid newspaper reports about tong violence.

“The Highbinders’ Favorite Weapons,” Harper’s Weekly of February 13, 1886 (Vo. XXX, No. 1521) from the collection of the Bancroft Library.

For example, the Daily Alta California published on January 18, 1887, an article titled: “A Bold Highbinder,” which detailed the removal of a girl from a “Chinese den” and her attempted recapture. One of the Chinese men attempting to take the child “slipped and fell on the pavement, at the same time drawing a revolver.” The man, Wong Bing Lin, was arrested and charged with carrying a concealed weapon. When searched, the police found a knife. “He also wore a coat of mail made out of compressed paper pulp, which could turn a bullet.”

Coat of chainmail used by highbinders.  Photographer unknown (from the collection of the Bancroft Library)

Increased gun violence by tong soldiers induced the city of San Francisco to enact local legislation to ban concealed weapons in 1890.  As reported by the Daily Alta on February 5, 1890, Chief of Police Patrick Crowley recommended that shooting galleries be removed, “in the Chinese quarter, where nearly every Chinaman is the owner of a pistol and is handy in its use.”

San Francisco police photo of weapons seized from Chinese “highbinders” c. 1900.  Photographer unknown.

Violence by Chinese began to slacken, particularly in the aftermath of the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, its extension by the Geary Act of 1892, and the disruption of the 1906 earthquake and fire.  Chinese rarely committed homicides against non-Chinese, as the violence usually occurred between Chinese by competing organized criminal organizations.

News account of a homicide allegedly committed by Hop Sing tong gunmen against a Chinese carpenter (and reputed Suey Sing tong member) located at 28-1/2 Waverly Place as reported in the The Call of Monday, January 7, 1900.

With the decreased perceived threat from Chinatown, the discourse shifted to include firearms themselves and the ease in which they could be acquired. However, in 1912, San Francisco saw a string a murders of young white women, killed by young men with easy access to firearms.  

“Peace Meeting in Chinatown, San Francisco, Feb. 1921, bet. the Hip Sings and Ping Koongs”. Photographer unknown (from the Jesse B. Cook collection of the Bancroft Library). The photo shows police officials mediating treaty talks between the warring Hip Sing (協勝堂) and Bing Kung (秉公堂) tongs.  

Although San Francisco police and merchant associations repeatedly mediated “peace treaties,” between fighting tongs, the ceasefires inevitably broke down.  

The San Francisco Call, March 13, 1913, reports on gunplay as part of a statewide conflict between the Suey Sing (萃勝堂) and Bing Kung tongs. The Suey Sing Tong traced its establishment to San Francisco in 1867 when merchants formed a fighting arm to protect their property interests. 

Homicide rates in the Chinese community began to spike in the second decade of the 20th century.

Chinese and white homicide rates compared (1860-1930).  Chart by historian and Deputy Chief Kevin Mullen (ret.).

“Race continued to play a role in the discourse of gun control in California, as judicious men worked to disarm non-whites they viewed as threatening,” according to Josselyn Green (a.k.a. Huerta) in her monograph “ Control of Violence, Control of Fear: The Progression of Gun Control in San Francisco, 1847-1923″ (Spring 2015 Master’s thesis).  “In 1923, the California State Legislature passed a second gun control bill … Most notably the new statutes stated, ‘no unnaturalized foreign born person … shall own or have in his possession or under his custody or control any pistol, firearm capable of being concealed on the person.’ Because the Chinese Exclusion Act had been extended permanently in 1902, thus denying Chinese Americans citizenship. California’s 1923 gun control law effectively disarmed the entire Chinese community.“

The denial of the Chinese community’s access to concealable firearms would remain in effect for a half-century until it was declared unconstitutional by a California Court of Appeals in People v. Rappard (1972).  

As for the wider conflict between the criminal tongs, conditions began to change during the 1920′s.  Crime historian Paul Drexler wrote as follows:

“The overthrow of the Manchu dynasty reduced the flow of tong members from China. As a result, Chinatown was becoming a more middle-class area. Community leaders realized they could make more money from legitimate commerce than from vice and became more supportive of The City’s government. Additionally, the Chinatown Squad, under the leadership of Sgt. Jack Manion, changed tactics and used community policing to win the trust of the Chinatown population.”

This same image from The Call newspaper would be reproduced for the cover by a FBI intelligence report during the 1970′s.  The gun had not only shaped California gun control legislation but its use by organized crime forever shaped US society’s perceptions and stereotypes of the entire Chinese community into the modern era.  

If the way of the gun represents a badge of a community's membership, and even its rights, in American society, then the denial of the Chinese American community's access to firearms a century ago was emblematic of its exclusion.   Law professor Pratheepan Gulaesekaram has written about the gun as a badge of membership in the American polity as follows:

“Access to, and use of, firearms has helped define ideas of membership in America. The gun played a vital role in the genesis tales of the Republic itself. It was a bullet fired into a British officer by a militia man in Lexington, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775, that is credited with igniting the war for independence; it was the gun that helped tame the wilderness and battle American Indians in stories of the expanding nineteenth-century frontier; and firearms were credited with shoring up the struggle for political and racial equality during Reconstruction after the Civil War. In all of these manifestations—as a tool of resistance to tyranny, an instrument of imperialism, a method of survival and self-protection, and a pathway to political inclusion—the gun facilitated formation of, and inclusion in, the American polity.

“Concomitantly, however, the gun has also demarcated the borders of exclusion as well. …”  

(Gulaesekaram, P., “Guns and Membership in the American Polity,” William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, vol. 21 (December 2012).

San Francisco Chinatown would not see a return to pervasive gunplay by any segment of its community until the 1970’s, but that is a story for another day.

“The Wild Cat (for the Highbinder’s feast of the uncooked meat),” c. 1902 - 1906. Photograph by Arnold Genthe (from the collection of the Library of Congress). A sidewalk vendor arranges his wild game products, including a wildcat carcass. One of the men in the background is an itinerant fortune teller.

Ruminations on the Wild Cat

Arnold Genthe's photograph "The Wild Cat (for the Highbinder’s feast of the uncooked meat)" presents a striking and unusual image from San Francisco's Chinatown taken between 1896 and 1906. It depicts the carcass of a wildcat suspended outside a storefront, flanked by other freshly killed fowl. Although the individual tending to the wild cat was not identified, historian John Tchen observed about the photo that “Wing Chew, the son of the original owner of the Tin Fook jewelry store, used to disappear into the mountains for a few days and bag a wildcat for sale in Chinatown…. ” (The telephone directory of 1902 first mentions the Tin Fook & Co. as operating a jewelry store at 711-1/2 Jackson Street, presumably up to the earthquake and fire of 1906.)

The photo provides a glimpse into the cultural and economic practices of the time. Wildcat meat was highly prized for its supposed medicinal and aphrodisiac qualities. It was often used in traditional remedies and consumed in concoctions that mixed the meat with ingredients like chicken, snake, and various herbs. Tong fighters, known for their violent turf battles and vendettas, would drink wildcat-infused wine for courage before going into combat.

The Wild Cat was taken in Chinatown during a time when the community was subject to the effects of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. As a result, violence and other hostile acts drove Chinese out of rural counties and into San Francisco Chinatown even as it became more segregated and isolated. However, it remained a vivid and mysterious subject for outsiders like Genthe and his fellow photographers of the Camera Club. His images, including "The Wild Cat," were part of a broader fascination with Chinatown’s cultural practices, capturing a mixture of admiration and morbid exoticism. Genthe's work often walked a fine line, romanticizing and sometimes distorting life and referring explicitly to criminal organizations in Chinatown to fit white American perceptions.

The Wild Cat remains among his lesser known works, as it can evoke uncomfortable conversations around so-called "foreign" eating habits, particularly when viewed through a modern lens. The image, featuring a feline carcass hung outside a Chinatown store, serves as a historical record of traditional practices, but it also readily stokes long-festering tropes about Asian culinary customs, fueled by xenophobia and cultural misrepresentation. These tensions are not new, as they linger to this day.

In recent times, this discomfort resurfaced when presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate accused immigrants in Ohio of consuming dogs and cats, a false claim that played into harmful stereotypes and generated widespread backlash for its inflammatory nature. The episode reminded audiences about the long and dishonorable history of castigating immigrants’ eating habits as recounted in a Guardian article here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/14/racist-history-trump-pet-eating-immigrant

Curiosity about 19th century Chinatown's food and cultural practices was often accompanied by suspicion or derision from outsiders – influenced and exacerbated initially by the great encounter of white migrants from the eastern United States with Asian immigrants to California in the mid-19th century.