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THE SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
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Friday, July 19, 1968
Register those firearms
Stronger gun control laws asked for by President Lyndon B. Johnson are causing increasingly bitter controversy in Washington. Congress is urged by the White House to compel registration of every firearm in the United States and to require that gun owners be licensed under strict federal standards.
Johnson's gun control plan immediately has set off hot controversy in Congress. Some members accused the President of reacting to a wave of "hysteria" set off by the recent assassinations. His call for registration and licensing came after a new law prohibiting mail-order sales of pistols and while Congress is considering extending that ban for shotguns and rifles.
On June 24 Johnson told Congress:
"Registration and licensing have long been an accepted part of daily life in America. Automobiles, boats, even dogs and bicycles in many communities, are commonly registered. Our citizens must get licenses to fish, to hunt, and to drive.
"Certainly no less should be required for the possession of lethal weapons that have caused so much horror and heartbreak in this country. Surely the slight inconvenience for the few is minimal, when measured against protection for all.
"There are now more firearms than families in America. The estimates range between 50 and 100 million guns in this country. Last year more than 3 million guns were added to private stock, building a massive arsenal which arms the murderer and the robber."
Violators of the law—which is administered by the Secretary of the Treasury—could have a $10,000 fine and up to five years in prison.
The law would require national registration of all firearms (except antiques) within 180 days of the effective date of the legislation.
Registration certificates must be carried with the firearms and presented to officers on their demand.
Anyone selling a firearm would be required to send his certificate of registration to the Secretary of Treasury within five days and also tell the name and address of the new owner and the date of delivery. If the firearm is lost, stolen or destroyed, it must be reported in 10 days. If a state did not adopt a federally acceptable
permit system, the federal government would do the licensing there. Federal gun permits could legally possess a firearm after Sept. 1,1971.
Those that would be denied permits would be: convicted felons, those under indictment, alcoholics, the mentally disturbed, drug addicts, persons convicted of violating firearms laws and juveniles.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the hand gun is the basic problem in firearms crimes, but no license or permit is required to buy or own them in 41 states.
New York State has a law which makes it illegal to buy or own a handgun without a permit from the police. In New York City the law is so strongly enacted that only 17,000 out of 8 million hold permits. But the city's crime rate keeps growing and criminals keep getting guns.
According to the FBI, states that require a permit to purchase hand guns have substantially lower gun-homicide rates than those that don't.
After the Robert Kennedy assassination there was an avalanche of mail for gun controls to hit Congress. Later, the mail was still coming in enormous amounts, but congressmen found mail turning heavily against federal controls.
On June 26 the Associated Press reported that a survey of 90 members of congress showed that immediately after the Kennedy assassination their mail ran strongly in favor of control laws, but by late June many were receiving letter ratios of up to 25 to 1 against controls.
Most Congressmen report that letters from big city areas and the East are usually for firearm control; those from Western and Southern areas generally oppose controls.
With the gun murder and robbery rate going as it is now it seems almost imperative that we do something in respect to the controlling of firearms sales. Not all gun owners are murderers, by any means—it is just a small, but growing, percentage we have to guard against. But to control them, all of them have to be controlled.
It is true that any laws enacted now could still be called a result of the "mass hysteria" after Kennedy's death, but now is the time to act. When the conscience of the people is aroused toward a good cause it is the time to act.
Timothy Cline
Guns keep on killing
Since 1900, more Americans have been killed by privately owned guns than by all the warfare in U.S. history. In five years, the nation has lost three of its more prominent citizens to assassin's bullets. Following the most recent Kennedy murder, many Americans from the President down have said they want to call a halt. They want to show the rest of the world that American society is not sick and that Bonnie and Clyde are not national heroes.
It has taken a long time. The U.S. tradition has been taming the frontier, and many have assumed that the right to own and bear arms is guaranteed in the constitution. But all the second amendment says is: 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.
The right to bear arms is firmly tied to state militia requirements. In 1939, for example, the Supreme Court upheld restrictions on sawed-off shotguns with the observation that these weapons were not ordinary military equipment. Two federal laws on gun control were passed in the 1930's because of the gang warfare.
In contrast to the loose U.S. laws, most European countries have strict laws. In Britain, even Bobbies do not wear guns. Only 30 murders by gunfire occurred there last year. Twenty thousand state and local laws take the place of uniform gun control laws in America.
Operating within these local laws, one of the oldest American industries thrives. A revolver can be bought for $9.50 and a shotgun for up to $5,000. Fifteen magazines are devoted to hunting and gun advertisements. The whole gun industry would be affected by a comprehensive law.
The National Rifle Association, a powerful lobbyist group, sets forth the contradictory arguments that: (1) Gun control is unconstitutional. (2) There are 30,000,000 law-abiding gun lovers. (3) Guns do not kill; people kill. (4) Criminals would get guns anyway.
If gun control laws are passed, the law abiding gun owner will not go through any more inconvenience than if he were obtaining a driver's license. Maybe fewer guns would be available to the public. Good! Fewer guns could mean fewer accidents.
The United States needs gun
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control laws. The first one in 30 years was rushed through in the aftermath of the assassination. It was only a half-way measure. Guns must be kept out of the hands of children, criminals, and psychopaths. Violence is not the American way of life.
-Audrey Shalinsky
"NO, NO THAT'S NOT MY CHALK DRAWER!—THAT'S WHERE I KEEP MY TEST PAPERS!"
Land of the bullet
The stars
Are like bullet holes.
In your flag,
wrote Soviet Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenke.
From the nation's beginnings, in fact and fiction, the gun has been provider and protector. The Pilgrim gained a foothold with the harquebus. A legion of loners won the West with Colt .45 Peacemakers holstered at their hips or Winchester 73 repeaters cradled in their arms. This image is wildly over-played, but in U.S. folklore nothing has been more romanticized than guns and the larger-than-life men who handled them.
Often the frontiersman was an anti-social misfit who helped create lawlessness. No matter. Daniel Boone and Buffalo Bill, Jesse James and Billy the Kid, hero and villain alike, were all men of the gun and were idolized. "Have gun, will travel" was more than a catch phrase. It was a way of life.
On the national day of mourning for Robert F. Kennedy, promoters of a Davenport, Iowa, pistol-shooting match decided to go ahead with the event but to observe a moment of silence after each volley, out of respect to the assassinated senator.
The gun problem is naturally highest in areas of recent riots. In Michigan, Dearborn's racist Mayor Orville L. Hubbard exhorted townpeople to "take up arms, learn to shoot and be a dead shot."
Increasing numbers of guns are falling into the hands of juveniles; in Chicago last year, 1,293 youths, one only eight years old, were arrested with guns in their possession. In Oklahoma, two brothers, 12 and 10, were charged with shooting a 49-year-old grocer to death.
The right to bear arms is being taken advantage of. Let's do something to save our country from being slammed by poets like Yevgeny Yevtushenke.
-Lou Ann Thomas
We need no more violence
This statement expresses explicitly and dramatically the stand of pro-gun Americans. The pro-gun Americans, and specifically the National Rifle Association, argue the constitutional right of the citizens to possess arms is being taken away from them by the proposed gun legislation. They argue guns are not responsible for crime and, at the same time, argue that gun control would not stop crime anyway. They argue gun legislation would "inconvenience" and "hamper" law-abiding gun holders.
"We are not about to surrender our firearms. I'll kill anyone who tries to take away my gun," an Indiana man wrote his senator regarding the recent controversy over gun control legislation.
The second constitutional amendment states: "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 inscrformed."
The private ownership of arms is quite removed from the military today. The gun is no longer the ultimate weapon. The protection of the nation no longer depends upon the private ownership of arms. An outdated amendment is misquoted and misread to fit a modern situation.
The amendment has been translated as a guaranteed right to possess arms, while all it states is that for the security of the nation a citizen can hold arms.
Therefore, the proposed gun legislation is not unconstitutional. No right is being taken away. A stricter gun control law has become the necessary action for a modern problem.
That problem is the deaths of 100,000 Americans by private guns. President Johnson
counted 6,500 murders with guns a year, 10,000 suicides, 2,600 accidental deaths, 44,000 serious assaults, 50,000 robberies and 100,000 nonfatal injuries. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare reported that three-fourths million Americans have died by privately owned guns since 1900, which is one-third of the number of Americans killed in all the wars in U.S. history.
America has had up to this time a web of 20,000 state and local laws which are essentially inadequate. If a gun cannot be obtained in one city or state, it is quite easy to go to another state where a gun can be purchased with merely the show of a driver's license, and often not even that. Is it any wonder so many are killed by a weapon so easily obtained?
American finally is sick of unjustified murder, blood and violence. It is sick of the society that allowed John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy to fall under a man's gun. America wants relief.
Former President Eisenhower, President Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Senator Dirkson and many congressmen have supported the gun laws. Can we not place our trust and confidence in elected, renowned, experienced and educated leaders? We can not risk to remain deaf and blind to the beliefs and warnings of these men.
One woman seeing a 4-year-old child playing with a toy gun pleaded with the Mother, "Don't let them play with guns. I can't stand to see it anymore." We can also say to our Congressmen, "Don't let us play with guns. We can't stand to see the blood, violence and grief anymore."
-Terri Staab