Weapons control in Milan, mid-16th c.
The Euroweenies have a long precedent for gun control:
During the 1540s and 1550s it was illegal for musicians to perform at inns or private parties to which the guests carried swords, lances, spears, daggers, small hand-held swords, or other prohibited arms, including the newly popuar harquebus. The penalty for violation of this decree was 25 scudi (that is, 133 lire) or three lashes of the whip, fines which most freelance musicians were both unable and unwilling to pay. The proliferation and control of arms was of general concern to the state in early modern Europe, and numerous ordinances limiting their usage were enacted by the Spanish crown in order to curb the assembling of makeshift armies for the purposes of revolt or banditry. This particular law, however, no doubt arose from the conventional wisdom that mixing weapons with levity, dancing, and alcohol had tragic consequences...[gruesome story follows]
-- Getz, Christine Suzanne, Music in the collective experience in sixteenth-century Milan. Aldershot, UK; Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2005, p. 172-3.
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