The Historical National Gun Control Thread

The Washington Post
Jul 5, 1990
Page MD2C

Maryland's Brady Bill
The Post's suppositions as to the alleged effectiveness of a proposed national seven-day waiting period and police background check on the purchase of handguns ["The Brady Bill: Decision Time," editorial, June 26] are refuted by the 24-year history of a similar law in Maryland.

Since 1966 the concept behind the Brady Bill—denying the retail availability of handguns to criminals by a waiting period and background check, has been a fact of life in Maryland and has proven to be just another fallacious "gun control." This law is not restricting the availability of handguns to career criminals as evidenced by the steady increase in Maryland crime rates since 1966. And there is no record of any criminal having been detected, prosecuted and convicted as a result of this law.

On an average of 25,000 handgun purchases a year, less than 5 percent are disapproved as a result of the state police background check. Of the disapprovals appealed, 50 to 85 percent are subsequently reversed due to erroneous criminal justice records.

A report by the Maryland Criminal Justice Coordinating Council states: "In particular, the policy implications of further gun controls... are such that one becomes resigned to the fact that guns cannot be effectively regulated out of the hands of criminals."

What Maryland's law has achieved is the creation of a repugnant system that denies citizens the legal presumption of innocence, makes them the object of police investigation by virtue of their exercise of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms and permits them to be victimized by an inept criminal justice records system.

Maryland should serve as the paramount example of whv the Brady Bill should be defeated.

W.VERNON GRAY III
California, Md.

The Washington Post
Jun 18, 1991
Page A20 (opinion)

Brady Bill, Senate Version
THE SENATE is now ready to consider its own version of the Brady bill, which not only addresses some concerns voiced by opponents in the House but also enjoys the full support of law enforcement groups, Sarah and Jim Brady and those who have been backing them in their effort for a seven-day waiting period on handgun purchases. The new language, drafted by Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and Sens. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin and Al Gore of Tennessee, adds to the House-passed bill a mandatory criminal records check that is tied to federal incentives for states to improve their records systems. In the House, one of the key complaints—or so they said—of National Rifle Association leaders and their congressional followers was that no background check was required. It would be in this version. So, will the leaders of the NRA join the forces of good sense and public safety this time around?

The new bill also answers another complaint generated in the House by NRA lobbyists/leaders—that the Brady bill could cause local law enforcement agencies to become "prime targets of opportunity for litigation." The Senate language would exempt police from liability on this point. Will the NRA leaders yield? Even if they won't, how about the senators who understand the overwhelming support shown for the Brady bill in poll after poll?

In a letter to Sen. Mitchell last Friday expressing strong support for the amended Brady bill, the Law Enforcement Steering Committee—a coalition of major police, sheriffs, troopers, law enforcement union members and criminal research organizations—points up the importance of a waiting period. "Contrary to the myth," the letter says, "an alarming number of criminals obtain their weapons through legal channels by lying on application forms. According to a Department of Justice study, at least 21 percent of criminals nationwide buy their handguns from licensed dealers.... The need for a national waiting period, to close existing loopholes in many jurisdictions, becomes clear and compelling. . . . Keeping handguns out of the wrong hands is critical to our efforts to reduce, in many instances, drug-related violence."

With roughly 639,000 Americans victimized each year with handguns, isn't it time to give the Brady bill a try? The House thought so, and now the Senate—regardless of how members may feel about other complex and undesirable provisions in its crime package—should add its support in the most emphatic way possible.

BTW

"A report by the Maryland Criminal Justice Coordinating Council states: "In particular, the policy implications of further gun controls... are such that one becomes resigned to the fact that guns cannot be effectively regulated out of the hands of criminals."

That report was written in 1983, titled "Guns and Crime Discussion Paper" and it was authored by Ms. Sally F. Familton and Ms. Rebecca P. Gowen.

The Washington Post
TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1975
Page A14 (editorial page)
Guns of August
SOMEHOW, WHEN the last of summer is draining away and the doldrums seem to have seized the city, the mind tends to focus on nothing more abrupt than a sudden, soaking summer cloudburst. But there are forces loose in our society that are not subject to summer doldrums, and one of them is the Gun—that ubiquitous instrument of the desperate and the ill. What a summer harvest it has given us so far in August:

A Seat Pleasant father takes the lives of three children and then his own-gunshots take the life of a father and his friend in the Northeast; robbers take the wallet of a University of Maryland publicist and then pump a .38 caliber slug into the back of his head; a northern Virginia teen-ager and two friends are playing With a .22 caliber pistol and it goes off, another young life lost; a Maryland state policeman meets up with a desperate youth and dies of gunshot wounds; two youths break into the home of a retired army colonel and he shoots them dead; three southeast Washington men argue and it turns to gunplay that kills one and wounds the two others; a boy walks near a woods and a shot rings out near Seven Locks Road and the boy is dead at 17. In all, since the first day of August, 13 persons in the vicinity of Washington died from gunfire.

By sheer happenstance, there was another statistic in the papers this month, in a brief story that hardly anyone would have reason to notice. It said that automobile registration had reached 129 million in the United States. That's cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses. But the, story didn't say merely 129 million. It said 129,943,087. Precisely. We can be that precise about how many motor vehicles we have because we are required by law to register them. Nobody thinks twice about it. If you go out to a show room and pick out a shiny new model, the first thing you know you must do is to go down to the department of motor vehicles—no matter where you live—and register it. It's automatic, no questions, no it's, ands or buts. If you tried to do otherwise, you'd be facing a judge in short order.

Not so with a gun. We know there are about 40 million handguns in the United Stales. Roughly. The agency responsible for keeping track of handguns says that is a guess. All we know is that about 2.5 million handguns are sold every year and that something in the neighborhood of 25,000 people a year die of gunshot wounds, and that the number is going up. A few jurisdictions in the United States take gun registration seriously, but in the absence of a federal law that stops the interstate traffic, there is little hope of real control.

This grim note on August should not be allowed to end without at least a note of optimism. After August comes September, when Congress will be back in session and absolutely free to address an item on its agenda concerning the registration and sale of handguns. There are various versions of gun registration legislation under consideration and it is impossible to say which one has the best chance of passage. It would be nice, however, to think that Congress might finally see fit to enact a law with sufficient strength to offer a hope of reducing a harvest of death that takes no recess and knows no holiday.

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This is because they estimate 40~M guns in circulation in 1975.

The Washington Post
Oct 1, 1975
Page A15 (Editorial)

William Raspberry
Gun Control: Why We Don't Have It

Spurred by the two alleged attempts on the life of President Ford, and a Gallup Poll showing that 70 per cent of the American people are in favor of stricter gun control, the U.S. Congress has passed and sent to the White House a stiff gun control measure designed to reduce the number of privately owned, concealable handguns.

It would make a nice news story, but don't expect to read it anytime soon.

For the truth is, your friendly congressman—no matter what his views on gun control—is not about to lay his career on the line by voting for tough gun-control legislation.

Before you accuse him (or her) of cowardice, remember Joe Tydings, the former Maryland senator who has been returned to the private practice of law almost solely because of his strong advocacy of gun control. Tydings' defeat is as much reminder as most members of Congress need of this fact of political life: The pro-gun control people won't vote for you merely because you are for gun control. But the anti-gun control people will sure as hell vote against, you on that single issue. And there aren't enough members whose seats are sufficiently safe that they can stare down the gun lobby.

The New York Times recently quoted an aide to an unnamed Western congressman as saying: "In private, my boss would probably agree that private citizens have no business owning concealable pistols. But he would never dare say so in public. There's something special about guns to the people who own them."

There certainly is. They'll flood a congressman's office with letters, inundate his district with American Rifle Association-type literature, buttonhole him, attempt to "educate" him. And they'll beat him in any halfway close election.

That is the one crucial reason why Congress won't be passing effective handgun legislation anytime soon. There is another, subsidiary reason; Not many congressman are that strongly convinced that gun-control legislation would do enough good to warrant the political risks.

If they could anticipate some dramatic result from a gutsy antigun stand—a marked decline in the murders, robberies and accidental shootings, for instance — they might be shoved into taking a stand.

But the problem doesn't lend itself to dramatic solutions. It took 200 years to build up America's private arsenal of some 100 million firearms, including some 25 million handguns, and it would take a long time before the kind of legislation favored by 70 per cent of the people would show any noticeable effect.

Unfortunately, a good deal more is involved than deciding what to do about the 100 million firearms already extant. Due to the absence of effective legislation, we are adding perhaps a million guns a year to that already alarming total. As a result, we are steadily increasing our chances of being robbed, murdered or killed accidentally.

That last is a category that tends to become obscured in the debate over how to make the President safer from would-be assassins. Kooks and criminals command our attention, but more than 70 per cent of all handgun deaths involve families, lovers and friends— either through accidents or through passion.

Thus, it is no answer to say that the criminal-minded would blithely ignore proscriptions against the sale or purchase of firearms, or requirements that they be registered, and, therefore, gun control would disarm only the innocent. The "innocent," at least statistically, are our worst handgun enemies.

Nor is there to my knowledge any compelling evidence that the handguns owned by the law-abiding among us makes us any safer from the criminals who would rob and kill us. Not many robbers or housebreakers are kind enough to give us time to go and find our pistols where we have hidden them from the children and then locate and insert the bullets (surely we've read about enough of those tragic accidents not to leave the things loaded, even if they are hidden).

If there were strong evidence that gun-control legislation would make us safer from "the criminal element" the Gallup Poll's 70 per cent might prevail. The evidence isn't there, however, except in reports indicating that a large percentage of handguns taken from apprehended criminals were stolen originally during burglaries of "good guys" homes.

But if gun control won't save us from crooks, perhaps it would make us a little safer from ourselves.

And even here, registration programs are clearly insufficient.

As a first, step, we could halt the manufacture, importation and sale of firearms and bullets except for law-enforcement purposes. That at least would freeze at present levels the number of guns in circulation.

A difficult, painful but necessary second step would be a program for reducing that deadly stockpile. That's just the sort of legislation Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) has introduced.

But it isn't likely to be enacted until the antigun people become as single-minded as the gun lobby and let their congressmen know that they can turn elections, too.

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Two points:

A.) This says 100M guns, of which 25M are handguns in 1975; a higher estimate than the other editorial that said 40M.

B.) It's all REEEEEEE THE NRA REEEEE in 1975, two years before the "Revolt in Cincinnati" that supposedly turned a sportsman organization into REEEE **** GUN CONTROL.

Washington Post
May 1, 1976
Page A11

Clayton Fritchey
The Gun Lobby's 'Dirty Dozen'

The invention of the so-called 'Dirty Dozen' congressional list is turning out to be the most surefire form of political pressure that the nation's capital has seen in a long time. It makes senators and representatives quake.

Until now it has been used only by environmental groups in campaigning against principal anti-environmentalists on Capitol Hill, but it has been so successful in the last three elections that other public interest groups, notably the antigun forces, are beginning to perceive its possibilities.

Every poll ever taken on the question of guns shows the American people have always favored strict control. It was 83 per cent for regulation even in the first poll taken more than 40 years ago. Sentiment is still strong for it. Yet tins year, as in the past, Congress is shying away from anything resembling an effective bill.

It is a testimonial to the National Rifle Association (NRA), the toughest and most relentless lobby since the old antisaloon league, which foisted Prohibition on the country. The NRA, instead of diluting its influence by intervening in every congressional election, developed the technique of singling out cerium prominent antigun politicians for special attention.

Several years ago, for example, it concentrated its considerable means against Joseph Tydings. a leading author of gun-regulation legislation, in his race for re-election as a U.S. senator from Maryland. When Tydings, then a young and popular figure, was unexpectedly defeated, the Senate got the message. Gun legislation came to a standstill. Today, Tydings is in the midst of a comeback campaign for his old seat in the Senate, but he is no longer campaigning vigorously against guns.

For the last three elections, environmentalists have made up a list of the the die-hard antienvironmentalists in their efforts against them. The results have been astonishing. More than 70 per cent of their targets have been defeated.

This has so terrified the new 1976 Dirty Dozen list that they have gone to the absurd length of complaining to the Fair Campaign Practices Committee. Imagine the committee repealing the free speech First Amendment.

The flustered congressmen think it is "unfair" for citizen groups to rate them on the basis of their voting records. They want the Fair Practices Committee to "monitor and expose" this kind of electoral scrutiny, which the committee, of course, has no intention of doing.

Rep. John Rhodes (R-Ariz.), the House Minority Leader and one of this year's Dirty Dozen, says the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee and Republican Research Committee are also being asked to look into the possibility of putting legislative restrictions on "rating" groups.

All this bluster prompted Dennis Bass, a spokesman for Environmental Action, to call it "an empty gesture that reflects a curious view of a citizen's constitutional rights." He saw it, however, as "a tribute to the effectiveness of environmentalists that Rep. Rhodes is taking our challenge so seriously."

It is not hard to see why they do take it so seriously, considering how many members of previous Dirty Dozen lists have been defeated for re-election. The list is now compiled annually by Environmental Action largely on the basis of which congressmen have most conspicuously put private and business interests ahead of ecological considerations.

As a result, the influence of the environmental forces has steadily grown since 1970, not only in Congress but in state legislatures as well. So, if a Dirty Dozen list can do so much for antipollution, why not a similar list of those doing the bidding of the gun lobby?

There are an impressive number of citizen groups, with nationwide connections, ardently supporting the cause of gun control, They are presently in a state of frustration because the latest bill, just voted out by the House Judiciary Committee, is little better than no bill at all.

It merely bans the manufacture of cheap handguns (Saturday Night Specials), but not the possession or sale of the existing supply, estimated at 40 million. The gun lobby has won again, but next year there will be a new Congress. Why not in the coming election concentrate on liquidating the principal opponents of gun reform? Success could do wonders for reform next year.

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One year before the so-called "Revolt in Cincinnati", the're REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEING against the Evil NRA.

The Washington Post,
Jul 8, 1968
Page A3

5 of Candidates Back Gun Curb

United Press International

The Emergency Committee for Gun Control said yesterday that five presidential candidates had endorsed its drive for additional firearms con-trols. but some stopped short; of advocating licensing and registration as sought by the Committee.

Former Astronaut John H. Glenn Jr., Committee chairman, said that more gun controls were proposed by Democrats Hubert Humphrey and Eugene J. McCarthy, and Republicans Richard M. Nixon, Nelson A. Rockefeller and Harold E. Stassen.

Glenn did not mention former Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace, an announced candidate, or Gov. Ronald Reagan of California, viewed by many as a potential candidate.

In addition, Glenn said that Rockefeller had become a member of the Committee, organized last month to lobby for tighter restrictions on the sale and possession of firearms, including licensing of all gun owners and registration of all guns.

The Committee quoted Humphrey as seeking "favorable action on registration, licensing and a ban on interstate and mail order sales. . ."

McCarthy was said to favor national registration of all handguns and "heavy guns" and a ban on mail order guns sales, or a system restricting mail order sales to persons deemed qualified to own them. The Committee said McCarthy considered regulation of store sales of rifles and shotguns a matter for the states to handle.

Nixon, according to the Committee, supports a ban on mail order sales of handguns and rifles and state provisions for registration and licensing, plus state laws for mandatory jail sentences for use of a firearm in the commission of a crime.

The announcement said Rockefeller wants "strong workable gun control legislation urgently needed in the battle to control crime and lessen violence." The Commit-The Committee quoted Stassen as saying: "I confirm my present and long-standing stand for strict gun control."

Registration Ordered For Spitfire Carbine
Associated Press

The Federal Government yesterday ordered the registration as a gangster - type weapon of a 45-caliber carbine it said can be fired like a machine gun.

The new ruling defines the Spitfire carbine, made by the Spitfire Manufacturing Co. of Phoenix, Ariz., as a machine gun subject to the registration provisions of the National Firearms Act.

This means the carbines must now be registered with the Federal Government and a $200 tax paid by the seller.

IRS officials said they have no idea how many carbines of this type are now in the hands of Americans but it could run into the thousands. The IRS said it will ask individuals now owning the guns to register them.

New York Times
Jul 7, 1968
Page E6

Gun Controls
Pressures to Disarm

WASHINGTON — About a half-dozen young women in mini-skirts stood in a barren storefront office here the other day and busily stuffed copies of letters into big brown envelopes addressed to members of Congress.

The letters were coming from angry citizens all over the nation and they contained one basic message: Congress should do something, and do it fast, to control the widespread traffic in guns.

The young women who were forwarding these letters to Congress are workers for the Emergency Committee for Gun Control, an ad hoc committee hastily slapped together a couple of weeks ago to try to capitalize on the widespread public sentiment for gun controls that followed Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination.

The emergency committee has become the focal point for churches, labor groups, and civic organizations who have decided since the assassination that more must be done to control guns. And while this coalition as yet is still highly tentative, it is showing the signs of becoming the first truly viable "anti-gun lobby" in the nation.

Scant Resources

The anti-gun forces are backing President Johnson's proposals to ban mail order sales of all guns, and to require registration for guns and licensing of gun owners. How successful they will be will become clear this week when Congress takes up the issue following its July 4 holiday recess.

The anti-gun forces so far have scant resources compared with the so-called "gun lobby," which for years has fought successfully against gun controls. That lobby is a strong amalgam of firearms makers, retailers, sportsmen, conservationists and others who have a financial stake in the sale of guns. It is led by the one-million-member National Rifle Association, housed in a $3.5-million building here, which takes in $5-million annually in dues.

The emergency committee, by contrast, is housed in an old brokerage office loaned by Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, it has perhaps 15 full-time workers and scores of part-time workers in about 40 states, none of them paid. And officials contend they are having trouble scraping together the $25,000 to S35.000 they believe they will need to wage their battle successfully.

The real strength of the anti-gun lobby lies in the spontaneous expressions of the American public, which has replied with feeling to its cause. The committee headquarters here has received more than 10,000 letters in the past week from ordinary citizens who want stronger gun controls. Some are contributing $1 to $5 to the effort.

Leading Citizens

The anti-gun forces also have brought together an impressive array of leading citizens to fight for stronger gun controls. The committee is the brain child of Philip M. Stern, the Washington philanthropist, who has contributed some funds. The venture was moved forward by John H. Sharon, a former law partner of Secretary of Defense Clark M. Clifford.

The committee Is working closely with the-National Council for a Responsible Firearms Policy, an organization formed early last year which is conducting a nationwide petition drive. James V. Bennett, former director of the U. S. Bureau of Prisons, is president of the council and a board member of the new emergency committee.

The emergency committee has drawn strong support from the remnants of Senator Kennedy's campaign organization. The committee's executive director is Nicholas Zumas, a law partner of Fred Dutton, a key Kennedy campaign aide. John H. Glenn Jr., the former astronaut who was active in the Kennedy campaign, is national chairman. And Papert, Koenig & Lois, a New York advertising firm used by the Senator, is donating its resources.

'Really Responding'

"The emergency committee was organized to give a major thrust, and focus national attention on the Congress for effective gun control legislation before it goes home this summer," explains Zumas. "The people are really responding. They realize that if we wait until after Congress goes home in August, we're going to have to wait until another national leader is killed before we get action."

Glenn, who owns six guns himself, cannot forget that it was his "awful duty" to inform six of Senator Kennedy's children that their father was dead. "I think the time has come when the Congress must meet its responsibilities to the American public," he says. "If we've ever had a chance to get legislation passed, now is the time."

-DAVID R. JONES

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The Gun.

The morning calm in New York's Central Park was shattered last Tuesday when a Bulgarian immigrant, Angel Angel of, armed with a .45 caliber revolver, shot and killed a 24-year-old girl, and wounded an 80-year-old-man and two police officers before he was slain by police gunfire.

Much about Angelof remains a mystery. The gun he used was first traced to a New Jersey contractor, Kiril Dimitrov, who told police Angelof had stolen it from him on a recent visit. Yesterday it was traced to two New Jersey policemen who reportedly sold the weapon illegally, according to sources close to the investigation. Both New York and New Jersey have strict gun registration laws.

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Opper In Puck, 1885

[Editorial Cartoon showing unkempt man waving a sheet of paper titled “DIVINE PERMISSION TO KILL” in a shop with a sign on it labeled “PISTOL EMPORIUM FOR CRANKS” with a table of revolvers laid out before the man and the shop's proprietor]

Dealer: "Well, you look a little crazy; but, of course, you may have all the revolvers you want."

Even in 1885, as this cartoon from the humor weekly Puck shows, there was controversy over the easy availability of guns.

THE NEW YORK TIMES
FRIDAY, JULY 19, 1968
Drop Those Guns
[Editorial]
Congress would make a major contribution to the health and sanity of the American people in this tense, troubled season by enacting a comprehensive gun control law. The threat of violence hangs like a heavy pall over the nation. The next outbreak could come anywhere and at any time from a political terrorist, a suddenly angered crowd on a street corner, or the quiet man next door gone berserk.

The threat is real and terrifying because in the United States the ruthless, the angry, and the mentally sick find it so easy to get their hands on guns. No other advanced industrial society in the rest of the world permits such easy access to deadly weapons. Americans suffer the consequences of their laxness. As former Justice Arthur Goldberg pointed out yesterday in announcing the formation of the New York State Emergency Committee for Gun Control, an American is killed or wounded by gunfire an average of every two minutes of every day.

* * *

Congress can cut down this carnage. The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote today on a bill to ban the interstate mail order sale of rifles and shotguns, a companion measure to the ban enacted earlier on the interstate sale of pistols and revolvers. This measure is all right so far as it goes, but it does not go nearly far enough.

It is imperative that Congress approve the bipartisan amendments sponsored by Representatives McClory of Illinois and Bingham of New York to require the registration of every gun and the licensing of every gun owner with the police. The prattle about "hardships" for sportsmen is silly. Gun registration would be no more of a hardship than is walking to the post-office to buy stamps or applying to the State Department for a passport.

Let no Congressman think that he will have done his duty by voting for a mail order ban on rifles and shotguns. This issue is not going to go away until registration and licensing are required by law.

New York Times
Jun 30, 1968
Page E1 [editorial]
The Battle Goes on For Stiff Gun Controls
WASHINGTON—As the White House well appreciates, no word is quite so likely to trigger the large-caliber, noisy and effective propaganda machine of the gun lobby as "registration."

For that reason, more than any other, the White House compromised when it proposed new gun control legislation in the wake of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination. Instead of recommending a strong bill with registration and licensing, the White House decided to send up to Congress a relatively mild proposal to stop interstate sales of rifles and shotguns by banning mail-order sales and over-the-counter sales to out-of-state residents.

The White House political calculation was that if it could suggest just mail-order controls —without raising the issues of registration and licensing—the Administration bill might slip through Congress without too much trouble or opposition from the gun lobby. Despite its always vociferous reaction to any suggestion of gun control, the gun lobby has no deep-seated objections to restrictions on mail-order sales. Most of such sales are cheap, imported guns, and at least one faction of the gun lobby, the manufacturers, has made clear that it was more than willing to support any legislation that would curb such foreign competition.

But then last week, the White House, which seemed to have been fumbling for the political trigger ever since the gun battle began, shifted its stance. President Johnson sent to Congress proposals for national registration of all firearms and licensing, by either the state or the Federal Government, of all gun owners. Such restrictions, the President said in a special message to Congress, are "no more and no less than common sense safeguards which any civilized nation must apply for the safety of its people."

Just why the White House switched remains unclear. Perhaps it felt it had underestimated the depth of public sentiment and pressure on Congress for stronger controls. Perhaps it was annoyed at finding itself placed in a position of being the advocate of a "half-way" measure. Perhaps it was embarrassed at being upstaged by a prestigious Emergency Committee for Gun Control, headed by former astronaut John H. Glenn Jr., that on Monday—the day of the Presidential message — came out strongly for registration and licensing controls.

Just at a time when the opposition was mounting a counter-offensive, the White House injected the registration issue, and the opposition to any controls only hardened. With the threat of registration and licensing now raised, House managers of the Administration bill worried about pushing mail-order controls through the House. In the Senate, the opposition on the Senate Judiciary Committee succeeded in putting off any committee action until probably mid-July.

Why the gun lobby should be so vehemently opposed to registration or licensing is difficult to explain because its objection seems to be based more on fears than logic. Fear, whipped up among gun owners by the National Rifle Association every time such controls are mentioned, is that registration somehow inevitably leads to denial of private ownership of guns. Thus, late one evening last week before the Senate Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee, Harold W. Glassen, president of the association, dourly warned that a campaign was under way to "foist upon an unsuspecting and aroused public a law that would, through its operation, sound the death knell for the shoot sports and eventually disarm the American public."

To meet such objections, President Johnson emphasized in his message that registration and licensing would not "impair the legitimate ownership or use of guns" and would "entail no more inconvenience for the gun owner than dog tags or automobile license plates pose for any citizen."

The rifle association then retreats to the somewhat more logical argument that registration and licensing could pave the way for confiscatory taxes on guns, or arbitrary restrictions by police; and that in any case it would be ineffective as a crime control measure, since only the law-abiding citizen would comply, while a criminal would ignore the law.

The purpose of registration Is not only to tell how many guns there are—the estimates range up to 200 million—and in whose hands they are held. The purpose also, as Attorney General Ramsey Clark explained, is to "smoke out" the criminals. Thus, if police pick up a suspicious person with a gun, they would be able to tell within minutes, by checking with a computerized registration center, whether the gun was registered. If unregistered, the criminal would have been caught in a crime even before he could use the gun.

Amidst all the political smoke, the first signs of a compromise are beginning to emerge on the registration-licensing issue. The compromise, tentatively advanced by certain members of the gun lobby, would call for a general form of licensing of all gun owners. In turn, the Administration and gun control proponents would drop their proposals for registration of all firearms. But it appeared doubtful that such a compromise would be completely acceptable to gun control proponents who are insistent upon some form of registration and increasingly confident that they have the votes for this in the Senate.

--J.W.F.

I've been looking at Chicago Tribune Archives, and the term "Gun lobby" doesn't actually appear until January 1965 in their records.

Chicago Tribune
SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 1968

Gun Makers Ask Modified Control Law
[N. Y. Times-Chicago Tribune Service]

Washington. June 15—A split developed today in the ranks of the gun lobby as three leading gun manufacturers came out in favor of a compromise version of the administration's gun control bill.

The three companies—Remington, Winchester, and Savage —announced that they supported legislation banning the interstate mail order sales of rifles and shotguns as proposed by the administration. But the manufacturers suggested, that the administration approach be modified to give individual states the right to exempt themselves from the prohibition on mail order sales.

Issue Joint Statement

Their position, modifying their past opposition to administration gun control proposals, was given in a statement issued jointly by R. H. Coleman, president and general manager of Remington Arms company; Charles L. Dubuisson, president of Savage Arms division of Emhart corporation, and William L. Wallace, vice president of Olin Mathieson Chemical corporation and general manager of its Winchester-Western division.

The three companies announced that two other gun manufacturers—O. F. Mossberg & Sons. Inc., and Ithaca Gun company—supported their position.

While qualified, the support of the nation's three leading manufacturers of sporting arms was regarded in the administration as further enhancing the brightening chances for gun control legislation in Congress.

Change in Attitude.

Partly because of the political impact of an outpouring of mail in favor of gun controls, the prospects of congressional action have changed in the period of a week from one where no action seemed likely to one where the administration believes it has better than a 50-50 chance of pushing legislation thru a once hostile Congress.

Next Thursday, the House judiciary committee is expected to approve at least a modified version of the administration bill. Once the bill is cleared by the committee, administration officials foresee no insurmountable difficulties in pushing the legislation thru the House.

Who Killed Bill S-1592?
By Willard Edwards

Washington
January 15, 1967 (Chicago Tribune)

Once again. Congress has stalled on firearm control legislation. The problem: How to reconcile the right of the people to bear arms with the need of society to keep them out of the hands of crackpots.

THE YOUNG SENATOR arose and the eyes of the galleries focused upon him. He was already a subject of national speculation, a contender for political power in his party and the nation, a gay, debonair figure unaware that be had less than six years to live—years of fulfilment beyond the dreams of most men, followed by a dark and tragic end.

The date was April 28, 1968, and John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts announced the introduction of a bill. He urged the Senate's approval. It was not a measure of international or even domestic import but what is known in Congress as bread-and-butter legislation, designed to please important constituents and garner valuable support in future campaigns.

The senator was concerned, he said, with the flow into the United States of cheap foreign guns and ammunition, originally manufactured for military purposes. His measure would outlaw the future importation of such weapons.

He did not resort to emotional phrases about the danger to life and limb from World War II rifles purchased abroad as surplus for a dollar or two and sold in this country for as little as $12. His approach was eminently practical and based upon the fact that five famous firearms manufacturers [he named them] were based in his home state. The foreign competition was hurting their business.

"Ammunition and guns imported into the United States have helped spoil the domestic market," Kennedy said. "I think the bill is in the interest of a great many jobbers and at least 125,000 retailers located in all 48 states, and of particular importance to five arms manufacturers in Massachusetts."

Congress is usually sympathetic to such arguments. The bill was referred to committee and seemed on its way to eventual passage. It had a powerful sponsor—a leading contender for the Democratic Presidential nomination—who was appealing in behalf of an American industry suffering from a 50 per cent drop in sales, resulting in the layoff of thousands of workers. In the House, a similar bill had just received unanimous committee approval.

But something happened to both measures. They died on the shelf. Eventually, an innocuous substitute was adopted. It simply prohibited the return to the United States of American military arms sent abroad under the foreign aid program. It left a fateful loophole.

In the next five years, hundreds of thousands of old rifles—Italian Carcanos, British Enfields, German Mausers, Norwegian Krags—poured into the United States without legal hindrance. The estimated total was five million.

One of them was a 6.5 mm. Manlicher-Carcano carbine which was sent to a Chicago mail order house. From there, it was shipped by mail to an erratic and emotional individual with a subversive background: Lee Harvey Oswald, in Dallas, Tex. Oswald paid $21.45 for this weapon and a telescopic gunsight, furnishing a phony name and a postoffice box number for an address, an unnecessary precaution. On Nov. 22, 1963, he used it to assassinate the young senator, who had become President of the United States. He broke no law until he pulled the trigger.

If the bill sought by Kennedy that day in the Senate had become law, it would have barred from this country the weapon with which he was gunned down.

The incident deserves recording mainly because of its ironic flavor. The Kennedy bill of 1968 would not have deterred Oswald from securing with ease and anonymity a high-powered rifle thru the mails. He might have had to pay more, as much as $80 or $100, but he would have encountered no difficulty in obtaining such a weapon.

There is deep significance and occasion for wonder, however, in what happened after the assassination, or rather, what did not happen. In the wave of shock and horror that swept the nation after the Kennedy assassination, 17 firearms control bills were introduced in Congress. Such leaders as Sen. Mike Mansfield of Montana, the Democratic majority leader, and Sen. Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois, the Republican minority leader, joined the chorus of demands for at least some regulation of firearms.

A year earlier, moribund drug control legislation had suddenly been revived and rushed to passage in an emotional reaction to the revelation that thalidomide deformed unborn babies. There was every indication that Congress, similarly disturbed by the Kennedy assassination, would act swiftly to put some curbs on mail order guns. Public opinion polls showed a substantial majority in favor of a law which, at least, would impose some difficulties on convicted criminals, narcotic addicts, juveniles, and the mentally ill who sought to purchase rifles, shotguns, and handguns.

Not one of the bills introduced after the assassination emerged from committee. All died with adjournment of the 88th Congress in 1964. Prospects for enactment seemed much brighter in the 89th Congress as President Johnson added his impressive powers to the drive for gun controls. However, that Congress, labeled "the greatest in history" by the President, adjourned Oct. 22, 1966, with no action taken in either house to limit mail order gun sales.

It is the purpose of this study to follow one bill, S. [for Senate] 1592, the Johnson administration's firearms control bill, thru the two years' agony it suffered before expiring in the congressional session just ended.

In the beginning, it seemed impossible to stifle, so prestigious was its hacking, The American Bar association, the International Association of Police Chiefs, and virtually the entire press hailed its virtues.

In the end, even tho a committee majority initially approved its terms, a substitute was reported to the Senate floor in the last days of the session when there was no time to take a vote. S. 1592 did not even retain its original sponsor and number. It was given another senator's name and a new number, S. 3767. It, too, died with adjournment.

There was so much conflict over the measure that no less than 10 members of a 16-member Senate committee filed dissenting and individual views just before the end. The simple purpose of the bill seemed lost in bickering over amendments. The pressures of a powerful lobby were evident.

But more than the adventures of this specific bill are involved in the story. Great questions intrude, bearing on the national mood, on the constitutional right to bear arms, on violence in the streets, and on the romantic attachment to guns in our society.

Again and again, the average citizen will ask why Congress is reluctant to curb the flow of killing weapons into the hands of individuals unfit to handle them safely.

For some, the answers are easy.

To a substantial group, the defeat of such legislation is due to the machinations of a blood-thirsty lobby, financed by the great arms manufacturers, fearful of losing profits if any law makes sale and possession of rifles and revolvers more difficult. An entire book, "The Right to Bear Arms," by Carl Bakal,* *[McGraw-Hill, 1966] marshals the data in pursuit of this thesis in impressive fashion. Innumerable magazine and newspaper articles have stressed a similar theory.

To another group, equally extreme in its anger, any gun control bill is the dark and sinister beginning of a conspiracy to deprive American citizens of their constitutional right to bear arms. The homeland would thus be defenseless when communist aggressors swarm onto the beaches.

Neither of these claims stands up under examination.

Attribution of all the bill's difficulties to the vote-buying power of a lobby conveys acceptance of the incredible premise that Congress is hopelessly corrupt. The record is clear that Congress is always reluctant to adopt a major legislative proposal until it is finally convinced that it expresses the general will of the people. When it comes to that conclusion, no lobby, however powerful or well-financed, can kill a bill.

Equally dubious is the argument that communist plotters seek to restrict possession of small arms in order to facilitate a foreign invasion. Even if would-be conquerors of the United States decided to forego an initial strike with nuclear weapons, sporting rifles and shotguns would have little effect against modern war weapons. The Hungarian freedom fighters in 1966 learned the futility of opposing Russian tanks, artillery, bazookas, and flame throwers with small arms. Where does the truth lie between these two hysterical extremes? Who and what killed S. 1592 and Ms predecessors? Will it be exhumed in the 90th Congress, miraculously given life, and finally become law? The answers demand explanation of the legislative process and the dangers that a bill faces as it travels down the labyrinthian path to the President's office.

Contrary to public opinion, based on press reports which reasonably stress action rather than inaction, Congress kills 25 bills for each measure it enacts into law. There can be no quarrel with the recent portrayal of Congress as a legislative factory, grinding out new laws under the prodding of an impatient Chief Executive, but the mortality rate of proposed legislation is huge. When the 89th Congress adjourned, 1,041 public and private bills had been approved in a two-year period. Left on the shelf were 25,525 measures, each bearing hopes and dreams of some legislator seeking what he regarded as desirable government action.

One of them was S. 1592. It bore the name of Sen. Thomas J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, chairman of the Senate subcommittee to investigate juvenile delinquency. It had been introduced Jan. 6, 1965, and at that time was virtually identical to a measure which be had failed to get out of committee in the 88th Congress, despite the furor over the Kennedy assassination.

Like its predecessor, the bill would not have stopped the sale of mailorder guns. It set up purchase requirements to help prevent the sale of these guns to minors, known criminals, narcotics addicts, and the mentally unstable.

Dodd had fought for similar legislation in 1963 and 1964 but ran into a roadblock in the Senate commerce committee. Now he was bolstered by a message from President Johnson declaring crime "a malignant enemy in our very midst" and identifying as a significant factor in the rise of violent crime the ease with which any person could acquire a firearm.

Following the President's recommendations, Dodd amended S. 1592 to prohibit mail-order sales and barring the over-the-counter sale of handguns to persons under 21 and of rifles and shotguns to those under 18. Knowing the attitude of the Senate commerce committee, be maneuvered consideration of this measure to his own judiciary committee where he would preside at subcommittee hearings,

But it was 12 months later before be was able to stir the measure from subcommittee. The American Bar association and the International Association of Police Chiefs indorsed it in the intervening period and the worst race riots in the nation's history, in the Watts section of Los Angeles, renewed a clamor for restrictions on gun sales. But there were rumors, denied by the then Atty. Gen. Nicholas Katzenbach, that the administration was weakening in its position, and the first session of the 89th Congress ended Oct 23, 1965, with the bill still bottled up.

Exactly one year to the day after introduction of the bill, it took its first small step on the path to floor action. Here, in chronological order, excerpted from the notes of an inside observer, a supporter of the measure, is the story of the measure's subsequent fate, beginning on a note of hope and ending on one of despair.

"March 22—On this first anniversary of introduction of the bill, the Senate juvenile delinquency subcommittee approved it by a vote of 6 to 3. We have lost three votes but we still need only three more in the full judiciary committee to get a majority of 9 to 7. We have reason tote optimistic.

"May 19—The subcommittee today filed its report, explaining its indorsement and the terms of the bill, and asking for action. The full committee continues to delay.

"Aug. 1—There are great black headlines in all the papers telling of a mass slaying in Austin, Tex. A student obtained three high-caliber rifles, a sawed-off shotgun, a German automatic pistol, and a large caliber rifle, and shot 45 persons from a tower at the University of Texas. Fourteen are dead. Perhaps this incident will shock the Senate into action.

"Aug. 2—Senator Dodd told the Senate today that the Texas slayings emphasized the need for keeping deadly weapons out of the hands of felons and mental incompetents.

"Aug. 16—The Senate today engaged in extensive debate on gun control legislation. Sen. Roman L. Hruska [R., Nev.] led it off, opposing the Dodd bill, and 13 other senators joined in.

"Hruska said the 'senseless and shocking tragedy' in Austin was abhorrent to all, but the Senate had a duty to act with deliberation and care, not under the stress of emotion. No pending legislation, however extreme, he said, would have stopped the Texas murders if it had been law. He noted that supporters of the Dodd bill had also cited the murder of eight nurses in a Chicago school dormitory two weeks ago as an argument for legislation altho no guns but knife and strangulation accomplished those killings.

"The real offender, in the unlawful and improper use of firearms, is the handgun,' Hruska said. 'We need a measure which would truly and effectively enable the states to control the handgun. Its status as the most formidable and most frequently used tool of the criminal is well recognized.'

"Hruska said he was drafting a substitute bill designed to require a purchaser of a handgun to submit an affidavit that be was at least 21 and was not prohibited by federal, state, or local law from receiving or possessing a firearm. This sworn statement would be forwarded to the principal law enforcement officer in the purchaser's locality.

"Hruska is a persuasive advocate and his views were supported by Senators Milward L. Simpson [R., Wyo.], Bourke Hickenlooper [R., Ia.], Len B. Jordan [R., Idaho], Leverett Saltonstall [R., Mass.], Norris Cotton [R., N. H.], Strom Thurmond [R., S. C.], Gordon Allott [R., Colo.], John Tower [R., Tex.], Paul J. Fannin [R., Ariz.], and Howard W. Cannon [D., Nev.] Dodd responded and was supported by Senators Joseph D. Ty-dings [D., Md.] and Edward M. Kennedy [D., Mass.].

"It may be significant that the floor battle pitted senators from the west, far west, and south against senators from the east. The gun mystique seems to thrive in wide open spaces.

"I am beginning to fear that we are in a losing battle so far as the Dodd bill is concerned. I suppose we should take comfort in the fact mat Hruska's proposal is not much different than what Dodd proposed before he enlarged his measure after the Kennedy assassination.

"Aug. 31—At a meeting of the judiciary committee, Dodd moved to report out the Hruska bill, announcing he would fight on the Senate floor to substitute his own bill. The motion failed. Stalling tactics are evident.

"Sept. 22—Dodd renewed his motion and the committee ordered the Hruska bill sent to the floor. Writing a report will take weeks, so conflicting are the views of members.

"Oct. 19—The new bill, bearing Hruska's name and a new number, S. 3767, was officially before the Senate today with a report containing no less than eight dissenting views and two individual opinions. The Senate is in the throes of adjournment, and Majority Leader Mansfield merely looked pained when asked if there was any chance of bringing such a controversial measure up in the few hours remaining. After three years of legislative battling, we are back where we started. The gun control bill is dead. We must start all over again in 1967."

"All hope has gone for control of mail order sale of firearms at this session," Dodd told the Senate Oct. 20. "I will reintroduce similar legislation early in the next session of Congress."

There are some extraordinary aspects to this tale of legislative homicide. Not the least is the fact mat not one of the 535 members of the House and Senate will deny the need for a law to reduce the likelihood that firearms will fall into the hands of the lawless or those who will misuse them. There is almost unanimous agreement that the 50states must be assisted in the enforcement of gun control laws in an endeavor to combat the skyrocketing increase in the incidence of serious crime in the United States.

The final report of the Senate judiciary committee required 55,000 words to outline its serious concern with the rise in lawlessness in the land and the relationship between the apparent easy availability of firearms and criminal behavior.

Congress was impressed by a simple statistic: In the three years since the Kennedy assassination, 54,000 American civilians have been killed by guns, 10 times our losses in Viet Nam.

No member denied that the first requisite for legislation was present— a problem existed on which some governmental action seemed desirable. Four years of hearings, prior to introduction of S. 1592 in 1965, had provided a documentary background.

The bill was drafted in full awareness that it affected an industry with sales of 280 million dollars a year and was of acute interest to an estimated 30 million citizens who have in their possession about 100 million privately owned firearms. The use of firearms is regarded as a healthy and wholesome outdoor recreation by 15 to 20 million hunters in the United States who annually spend more than a billion dollars on their favorite sport.The money they pay in licenses and excise taxes on sporting arms and ammunition supports most of the government programs on wildlife management.

This full-page advertisement, sponsored by the National Rifle association, appeared last year in the New York Times. It shows Franklin D. Roosevelt, with gun, in a 1917 photograph. The N. R. A. supports what it calls "sensible" gun laws, but defends the right of citizens to use firearms for sport and defense.

Additional millions of citizens regard the possession of guns as desire-able and, in many cases, essential. Farmers keep guns to protect their stock and crops against wild animals or crows, woodchucks, rabbits, and squirrels. Many gun enthusiasts enjoy target shooting. A sizeable group collects guns as a hobby.

Despite the care taken by the bill's sponsors to inconvenience these groups as little as possible in the lawful acquisition of weapons, the legislation never mustered the massive public demand for action which Congress cannot disregard. It became "controversial," a label which causes shivers of fear in vote-conscious members. Was an iniquitious lobby responsible?

The National Rifle association, which has some 700,000 members, has been assailed as the lobby mainly responsible for defeat of all gun control legislation in the past 30 years. There is no question that it has consistently fought restrictive firearms legislation at all levels of government for a long period. It is zealous in its campaigning, probably stimulates much of the mail that floods Congress in opposition to gun control bills, and numbers among its members some influential members of Congress.

On Dec. 13, 1963, however, two weeks after the Kennedy assassination. Franklin R. Orth, executive vice president of the N. R. A., usually named as spokesman for the "lobby," told the Senate commerce committee that "steps must be taken to curtail the traffic of mail order guns into unauthorized hands." He said the Dodd bill, as originally introduced, represented the combined thinking and agreement of the "shooting fraternity'' and was "a sound approach to a solution winch has become a national problem."

Supporters of the bill have since raged that the association, under cover of this formal stand, continued its secret sniping at the legislation. Whether or not there is any substance to this charge, attribution to this organization of power to stop legislation favored by a public majority is to take leave of the political realities. If the voters back home became genuinely aroused over the lack of gun control legislation, Congress would rush it into law.

A study of the bulky volumes of testimony on the Dodd bill and its many variations suggests that this favorable political climate was absent. Witness after witness voiced uneasiness that the legislation would open the door to restrictions on lawful

ownership and use of small arms by citizens of good repute. Many had never even heard of the National Rifle association but they instinctively recoiled at the phrase, "gun controls." They agreed that juveniles, criminals, halfwits, and dope addicts should not be able to procure deadly weapons but there was suspicion that broader curbs were, envisioned— registration of ownership, licensing, and punitive taxes or fees.

One obvious reason for opposition to such limitations is the rise of crime in the United States. Many a citizen, reading horrendous stories of rapes and muggings in the streets and a startling increase in house burglaries, has concluded be ought to have a gun in his home, or perhaps to carry at night when abroad, to protect himself and his family.

"We must strike a delicate balance," Senator Thurmond told the committee. "We want to keep guns out of the hands of juveniles and undesirables but not restrict the right people from keeping guns in their homes to protect themselves and their families."

This theme was sounded again and again in the testimony. Criminals could always procure pistols and shot-guns, witnesses protested, why disarm the honest citizen?

Senator Allott proudly recounted the heroism of one of his secretaries, Miss Joyce Morgan, whose apartment had been invaded at night by a robber.

"She was a girl of great courage and fortunately her father had purchased for her a Woodsman .22 and instructed her in its use," he said.

"So when she discovered that someone was in her dressing room, she picked up her gun and, with a well-placed shot, convinced him that he ought to give himself up. She was able to hold him at bay until police arrived. We do not know what might have happened to her had she not been in possession of a gun and able to use it."

The feeble objections of the bill's supporters were unheeded. The measure merely subjected the honest citizen, they noted, to some inconvenience by requiring him to file, as a precedent to gun ownership, an affidavit that he was, indeed, an honest citizen. They could not dissipate a popular impression that stiffer regulations lurked in the offing.

But there was an additional obstacle to the bill's passage which became visible in the huge record. The conclusion cannot be avoided that it bulked larger in the final accounting than any of the handicaps already recorded in this story of the death of a bill.

This simple fact emerged from the words of hundreds of witnesses: Americans have had from their frontier days a romantic outlook en guns which has never faded. It is a love affair unmarred by the passage of years, eagerly embraced by every successive generation.

Citizens in other civilized countries meekly submit to laws forbidding ownership of a firearm without some sort of special permit

But in the United States, all proposals for federal controls extending across state lines have perished because of a national suspicion that they would interfere with a freedom cherished since the framers of the Constitution approved article II of the Bill of Rights, reading: "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."

This constitutional amendment is repeatedly cited by opponents of gun control legislation as a bar to federal restrictions. The courts have held that it does not apply to state laws requiring licenses or permits or prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons.

These legal arguments are not impressive to great numbers of people brought up to regard guns and their use as an inseparable part of a glorious American tradition born in the period when the United States won freedom from British tyranny. From the earliest frontier days, guns were vital to self-defense and the gathering of food and Americans were proud to be known as "a nation of riflemen." As the frontier pushed westward, the gun became a symbol of virility and legends grew in file west about lawmen and outlaws skilled in the fast draw, in recent years, television dramas about the winning of the west have trained new generations to idolize heroes who settled disputes with bullets.

Soon after he is able to walk, the American boy is given a toy gun with with to play cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers. He awaits the day when be gets his first B-B gun. The military draft embraces him and he is taught to handle weapons. He joins an estimated army of 40 million individuals familiar with guns and inclined to associate marksmanship with good citizenship.

Two magazines, Guns and The Shooting Industry, frequently publish pro-gun editorials.

This personal attachment to firearms may not be shared by countless millions who have never touched a gun. Public opinion polls after the Kennedy assassination revealed 78 per cent of the people in favor of a law requiring a police permit for the purchase of a gun. But this reported sentiment was not translated into a popular clamor heard on Capitol Hill. In the months that followed, it appeared to be replaced by doubts and suspicion of any federal law that seemed to interfere with the legitimate and lawful ownership and use of firearms, a right jealously guarded since the beginning of the Republic.

The Dodd bill thus had every advantage but one in winning its way to passage. It had the backing of a powerful President and of the forces of law and order. It had received long and careful preparation under the skillful guidance of a veteran legislator. It had widespread editorial support.

It died because it lacked the one ingredient without which few major legislative proposals ever gain the stature of law. It could not muster the popular demand necessary to overcome the traditional reluctance of Congress to approve legislation that does not appear to express the general will of the people. President Johnson seemed to sense this and did not exert the pressures which he used to force Congress to accept other measures of his program.

In an interest-group society, Congress yields to the strongest influences that play upon it. An aroused public opinion, expressed in a flood of telegrams, letters, and telephone calls to members of Congress will always, in the end, overcome the propaganda and pressure techniques of a lobby representing a minority. In the case of gun control legislation, this outpouring of national sentiment was absent except in the period immediately following the Kennedy assassination, it soon subsided.

One of the miracles on Capitol Hill is the resurrection every two years, at the beginning of a new Congress, of thousands of measures formally buried by its predecessor. The gun control bill, thus revived in the 90th Congress, bearing a new number and the high hopes of its backers, faces the same, rocky legislative road it has traveled in the past. Again, it has two years to reach the goal of passage in both Houses and again, it will be bitterly contested all the way.

As in the past, the most formidable bar to its approval will be alarm that it somehow invades personal freedom. In an increasingly crowded society there may be little place for guns, but great numbers of Americans, as the fate of the Dodd bill suggests, like the sound of that 180-year-old guarantee of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." ■

Some typographic errors. Are they in the original text?

Even though I'm not for national licensing/registration, I wonder if in return for that you could get whatever you want online and sent to your house? That's the gist I get from these old articles.

March 20, 1989

Dear Colleague:

All across America we have seen an alarming proliferation of deadly assault weapons, designed for military battlefield use. The most tragic example of this trend occurred just weeks ago, when Patrick Edward Purdy opened fire in a crowded schoolyard in Stockton, California with an AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle. He fired over 100 rounds of ammunition in less than two minutes. The result was five children killed, 29 children and one teacher wounded.

Despite an extensive arrest record, misdemeanor convictions, and a history of mental illness, Purdy was able to walk into a gun shop, fill out a simple federal firearms form with no background check, pay his money and walk out with a weapon designed by the Soviet Union for its combat troops.

Semi-automatic assault firearms have become the weapons of choice of drug dealers. The easy availability of these weapons dangerously tips the balance of power away from our law enforcement officers, who are on the front line in our nation's "War on Drugs." These weapons are not designed for hunting game but for killing human beings.

In an effort to place some controls on these weapons of war, we have introduced S. 386, the Assault Weapon Control Act of 1989. This bill bans the transfer, importation, transportation, shipping, receiving, and possession of any new assault weapon, except for those used by the military and law enforcement.

Persons who lawfully own assault weapons now would be allowed to keep them, but would be required to register those weapons with the Secretary of the Treasury.

Any transfer or sale of a lawfully possessed and registered assault weapon would be subject to a thorough background check of the buyer, comparable to that now employed when a machine gun is sold. This background check allows a local law enforcement official to stop the sale of an assault weapon to an individual known to the local police as someone who would present a risk to the community if armed with that firearm.

In defining assault weapons, the bill specifically identifies the most dangerous weapons now available to the general public, including the AK-47, the UZI, the MAC 10 and MAC 11, the TEC 9 and TEC 22, the Ruger Mini 14, the AR-15, the FN-FAL and FN-FNC, the Steyr Aug, the Beretta AR 70, and Street Sweeper and Striker 12 shotguns. The bill also covers a narrow very specific category of semi-automatic firearms with a fixed magazine capacity exceeding ten rounds of ammunition, and shotguns with a fixed magazine, cylinder, or drum capacity exceeding six rounds. No conventional hunting rifles or handguns are covered by this definition.

[OCRer's note: The original has a notation written over “fixed magazine capacity exceeding ten rounds” where it says “15”.]

The bill also provides that the Secretary of the Treasury in consultation with the Attorney General, shall determine which firearms are substantially identical to those named in the bill. Such a provision is necessary to prevent manufacturers from circumventing the bill by making only cosmetic changes to one of the assault weapons specifically listed. The Secretary has no discretion to designate a weapon as an assault weapon. The Secretary may recommend to Congress that additional weapons be designated as assault weapons, but doing so would require new legislation.

With this approach this bill does not in any way limit one's ability to purchase a legitimate hunting rifle or handgun.

This legislation also bans the transfer, importation, transportation, shipping, receiving, and possession of large capacity detachable magazines or large capacity ammunition belts, with a capacity of greater than ten rounds. a magazine or belt is the mechanism for feeding ammunition into a firearm.

Persons already in possession of large-capacity magazines or belts must, within 60 days of the bill's enactment, dispose of them, or sell or donate them to the government. This will prevent the sale of large-capacity magazines and belts for use with semi-automatic rifles and handguns. It is extremely rare hunters to use magazines in excess of five rounds. In fact, in some states it is illegal to hunt with a firearm armed with a large-capacity magazine.

Our intent in this bill is to control specific assault weapons that present a law enforcement problem, not to restrict the sale and possession of legitimate hunting rifles or handguns, including semi-automatics. We believe that the bill accomplishes that objective. However we are open to suggestions or changes in language that any of our colleagues feel would clarify the bill's intention.

The National Association of Police Organizations, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association, the Police Executive Research Forum, the National Education Association, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the American Bar Association are among the groups who have voiced support for federal legislation on assault weapons.

These weapons of war have no place on the streets and in the schoolyards of America. We believe the American people are fed up with the death and violence brought on by these assault weapons. They demand action. We hope that you can join the law enforcement community, and the education community in supporting this much needed public safety legislation.

Sincerely,

/S/
Howard M. Mezelbmaum

/S/
John H. Chafee

/S/
Claiborne Pell

/S/
Alan Cranston

/S/
Edward M. Kennedy

/S/
John Glenn

It looks like Philadelphia politicians think they know how to reduce “gun violence”. They want law-abiding citizens to check their homes for hidden firearms and turn them in. I’m guessing there’s going to be an uptick in domestic violence.
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