On this day in history, some good, some bad.

1920: One year after the ratification of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, starry-eyed idealism knows a brief triumph over human nature as Prohibition goes into effect.   Shortly thereafter, gun violence spikes as criminals vie for the booze trade.  The  gov'ts response?  Impose a tax on machine guns and short-barrelled weapons.  That worked well.   From Constitution.net:

21st Amendment
It would be a disservice to say that the 18th Amendment was completely ineffective. It would also be a disservice to say that the 18th Amendment caused the lawlessness embodied by people like Al Capone. The 18th Amendment did reduce alcohol consumption in the United States, and it did not cause organized crime. In the Prohibition era, alcohol consumption (measured in gallons of ethanol consumed) dropped to an average of less than a gallon per person per year, down from two and a half gallons in 1915. And organized crime existed before Prohibition, and existed after it, too.

That having been said, the Prohibition era did have a certain sense of lawlessness; the very fact that consumption was not eliminated is testimony to that; and the fact that organized crime manufactured and distributed the bulk of the illicit alcohol of the 1920's and early 1930's is evidence that gangsters were aided by Prohibition. Enforcement was spotty, with stills and speakeasies popping up in every population center. Over-zealous police and federal agents violated civil rights when searching for and destroying the paraphernalia of alcohol. While most Americans respected the law, were in favor of the law, the shine of "dry" began to wear off, especially as the Great Depression set in.

A movement began to form to repeal the 18th Amendment. Prohibition of alcohol was seen as an affront to personal liberty, pushed on the nation by religious moralists. Alcohol was also seen as a source of revenue for the local and national governments. The effort to elect "wet" legislators was as grand as that to elect "dry" ones almost two decades earlier. The Congress passed the amendment on February 20, 1933 (288 days). It mandated, for the first time, that conventions of the states were to vote on the amendment, rather than the legislatures, feeling that conventions would be more apt to vote to ratify - and they did, quickly — the ratification process was complete on December 5, 1933. The 21st Amendment repealed the 18th, the first time an amendment had been repealed by another.

 

Emphasis entirely mine.  Any of that sound familiar in a more recent context?

I would note that after repeal, "wet" or "dry" status in many states (at least here in the midwest) was left up to the counties.  This resulted in things like county sheriff's in "dry" counties boarding passenger trains and seizing passenger liquor as contraband.  One can imagine a Sheriff looking at the skies wondering how to enforce the dry status on an  airplane for the 10 minutes it was overhead (leave aside the fact they had no actual jurisdiction).  Here in Leavenworth, the local police would lie in wait hoping to catch military personnel with liquor - booze being legal on-post, but not in Leavenworth county.  My mother had some good stories to tell in that regard.

My personal experience with the respect for law this dichotomy caused occurred in Lawton, Oklahoma, when I was attending the Officer's Basic Course - I went to a bar, had to "join the club" for the evening (at a minimum, longer memberships were available) ordered a drink, and was asked if I was "Mr. Smith or Mr. Black?"  I blinked stupidly at the bartender, and responded with a witty and erudite "Huh?" 

After satisfying himself that I was not from around those parts, vice being a law enforcement sting, he explained "bottle clubs" to me.  Public places could not serve liquor.  Only private clubs could serve liquor -hence why I became a "member) - yet they could only provide mixers. The alcohol had to be provided by the customer.  Hence, I became "Mr. Smith" and got my Whiskey Sour.  I would note that since *I* was *koff* providing the booze, those mixers were damned expensive, and an awful lot of people helped themselves to *my* bottle!  Of course, they didn't object when I hit their bottle, so it all worked out in the end. 

But a certain respect for the "rule of law" took a bit of a beating, methinks.  That's one thing bad law and bad law enforcement does - damages respect for the law in general.

On the plus side for today - in 1945 1st and Third Armies linked up in Houffalize, Belgium, and the Battle of the Bulge was officially over.  And in 1953, Chevy (then a privately-owned car-maker) introduced the Corvette.