FEDERAL FIREARMS ACT

FRIDAY, JULY 28, 1967

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON JUVENILE DELINQUENCY

OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,

Washington, D.O.

The subcommittee (composed of Senators Dodd, Hart, Bayh, Burdick, Tydings, Kennedy of Massachusetts, Hruska, Fong, and Thurmond) met, pursuant to notice, at 9:40 a.m., in room 318, Old Senate Office Building, Senator Thomas J. Dodd (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Senators Dodd, Hruska, and Thurmond.

Also present: Carl L. Perian, staff director; Bernard Tannenbaum, special counsel; Richard W. Velde, minority counsel; William C. Mooney, chief investigator; Eugene W. Gleason, editorial director; Peter Freivalds, research director; and Richard C. Sheridan, assistant minority counsel.

Chairman DODD. We will resume the hearing.

The first witness this morning is Senator Joseph Tydings, a member of the Judiciary Committee of this subcommittee. We welcome you and we will be glad to hear your testimony.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH D. TYDINGS, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

Senator TYDINGS. Mr. Chairman, Senator Hruska, I appreciate the opportunity to appear once again before this subcommittee of which I am a member.

Mr. Chairman, I have to say frankly, as a Member of the Senate and as a member of this subcommittee, I believe that these hearings are an unnecessary delay in an already long-drawn-out history of this gun bill legislation.

The testimony heard during this new set of hearings has been heard before. The provisions of Senate bill 1 have been considered extensively by this subcommittee before.

I sat in the same hearing room in 1965 week after week hearing basically the same type of testimony you have been hearing again this

rear.

We have carefully considered every clause of this bill, every innuendo, every result before.

The bill was given extraordinary attention in its preparation by the Department of Justice. The President has sent it to the Congress every year for 3 years. This bill has had as much consideration by this subcommittee and the full Committee on the Judiciary last year as

any bill considered by our committee during the last meeting of the Congress.

My strong feeling is, Mr. Chairman, that the time for debate is long since over and the need for action is urgent.

I don't think that I have to repeat to you the intelligence which has come out of Newark or Detroit, where weapon after weapon after weapon taken from the snipers by the hoodlums rioting, were acquired through mail-order purchase. Governor Hughes of New Jersey spoke publicly and on national television of the tremendous need for this legislation, if we are going to make any dent at all in the easy acquisition of firearms by the hoodlums and snipers involved in these riots. I don't think I need to repeat here a detailed analysis of the bill or the voluminous statistics and arguments that so persuasively demand its enactment. They are known, they have been repeated again and again in hearing after hearing. I don't have to repeat the carnage of last year's gun deaths total-17,000 people died from firearms in the United States in 1966.

This problem was urgent when it was originally proposed in 1963. and has become more urgent with every passing year and indeed every passing week.

As the crime rate has increased, so has the glut of guns and weapons of war from abroad which are falling into the hands of those mos likely to use them for criminal and violent ends.

I think it was a year or so ago that the chief of police down at Atlanta, Ga., as I recall, stated that an extremely large percentage of all guns which were confiscated by the Atlanta, Ga., Police Department were foreign imports. I think he said 80 percent were foreign imports.

More than 2 million guns have been imported into the United States during the time of this bill which would eliminate such impers has been languishing in this committee. I don't know, Mr. Chairman. whether you saw the writeup in Life magazine which showed the sniper in Newark sitting by the window, but you don't have to be any gun expert to see that the weapon he was holding was a forei import.

S. 1 meets the gun traffic problem by inhibiting gun purchases by those who will use the guns criminally. It does not substantially aft those who use guns legitimately. The whole thrust of this bill is to aid the local authorities. And when a short drive in a car and a 4-ent post card will render useless the most sophisticated gun law, it is wonder the Department of Justice, the FBI, and hundreds of Stve. county, and city law enforcement officials plead for this legislator The effectiveness of local gun laws is beyond question.

Only those who sophistically demand that gun laws solve all crim to be worthwhile claim otherwise.

For example, although FBI statistics show that the murder ra for metropolitan areas is above the national average while the rum' rate is below it, strong local gun laws reverse this ratio. The heat r urban States with gun control laws have a lower percentage of g murders than the predominantly rural States with little or no controls Contrast the gun homicide rates in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey, which are between 32 and 39 percent, and these are nei marily urban metropolitan areas where admittedly law enforcemen

is more difficult than in a rural area, with the rates in Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Texas, and Nebraska which range from 62 to 70 percent. Thus, States which have strong gun controls frequently have one-half of the gun homicide rate of States with weaker gun controls.

I would like to insert in the record at this point excerpts from FBI uniform crime reports showing murder rates for geographic areas of the country, a brief summary of firearms crimes in the United States. These are marked exhibits which back up what I have just said in detail.

Chairman DODD. Without objection they will be included.

(The documents referred to were marked "Exhibit No. 118” and are as follow :)

EXHIBIT No. 118

EXHIBIT 78(a).-EXCERPTS FROM FBI UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS RE MURDER RATES FOR GEOGRAPHIC AREAS OF THE COUNTRY (TABLE 1. INDEX OF CRIME)

Rate of murder by gun, expressed as percentages of the total, by geographic area:

Cities.

Suburban.

Rural.

EXHIBIT 116(b).—BRIEF SUMMARY OF FIREARMS CRIMES IN THE

UNITED STATES*

1. 5,634 gun murders in 1965-57% of the total number of murders. (5,090 gun murders in 1964-55% of the total number of murders.) (4,760 gun murders in 1963-56% of the total number of murders.)

2. 30% of the 5,634 gun murders were committed with rifles and shotguns. (This is a total of 1,690 lives lost.)

3. Geographic breakdown of gun murders:

38% of the murders in the Northeast were committed with guns.
60% of the murders in Western states were committed with guns.

61% of the murders in the North Central states were committed with guns. 66% of the murders in Southern states were committed with guns. 4. Percentage of gun murders in individual states (1962-1965):

(a) States having gun controls:

Massachusetts, 35%.

New Jersey, 39%.

New York, 32%.

Pennsylvania, 43%.

(b) States having minimal or no controls:

Colorado, 59%.

Louisiana, 62%.

New Mexico, 64%.

Arizona, 66%.

Montana, 68%.
Texas, 69%.

Nebraska, 70%.

5. Police Officers killed in the line of duty:

(a) 52 or 53 officers killed in 1965 were killed by guns. (32 killed with handguns, 13 with shotguns, and 7 with rifles.)

(b) Of 278 officers killed since 1960, 96% were killed with guns. (78% with handguns and 22% with long guns.)

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation.

6. Aggravated assaults by gun (17% of the total):

(a) 1965, 34,700.

(b) 1964, 27,700.

(c) This is an increase of 7,000 in 1965 over 1964.

7. Armed robbery (58% of the total number of robberies): (a) 1965, 68,400.

(b) 1964, 64,000.

(c) This is an increase of 4,400 in 1965 over 1964.

Senator TYDINGS. As Americans we tolerate a rate of gun murder that is unacceptable in modern countries. No major European country has a murder rate of more than one-half to one-eighth of our own murder rate. Look at the gun murder statistics for 1962. The United States, 4,954 gun murders; Great Britain, 29; Belgium, nine. Denmark, six; Sweden, five, and Holland, none. Let me repeat again. The United States 4,954.

To the extent that guns account for 57 percent of all murders conmitted in the United States, Congress must take its share of responsibility for the growing carnage. Only we have the power to contr interstate commerce in guns. The States are helpless really to effec tively enforce their own gun laws until Congress acts to help them. Yet for 3 years the Congress has stood still, watched the gun crime rate rise, sat by this summer and watched snipers shoot from the walls of Newark and the rooftops of Detroit, and today have not really lifted a finger to stop this criminal, tragic interstate mailing of mailorder rifles to hoodlums and criminals.

We control, and passed legislation under the commerce power to prevent gambling, prostitution, conspiracy, fraud, arson, and kidnap ing, but we have failed so far to even bring a bill to the floor of the Senate to halt the deadly flow of weapons headed for the hands of murderers, robbers, hoodlums and rioters, which as late as yesterday were still shooting at policemen and firemen and honest citizens from the rooftops of buildings in our major cities.

There has been a great deal of talk about the need for action on the riots which the Congress could take. Well, this is one area of actions which the Congress could really do something to help the law enforce ment officials in our great cities which have been beset with riots if they want to act.

Mr. Chairman, the main reason that this bill has not been passed is that it has been the object of a campaign of misrepresentation securi to none, at least in my experience as a legislator, by the gun lobby. especially by the National Rifle Association.

It has been my privilege recently to speak to legal groups, bar associations and indicial conferences in the far west-Kansas, Mortana, Utah, California-and I am cognizant of the fear and the twi ing of facts that has been accomplished by the NRA and this miniers in the minds of a great many of our western outdoor citizens. Now, take the great States of Montana, or Utah or Idaho or Colorado o Arizona or Nebraska. People out there have a great life, they are che to the outdoors, you can buy a hunting license or a fishing rod r worms or lures or ammunition in any garage, any gasoline station, ap country store. The average citizen in any of these places is 10 or 15 minutes away from a good fishing spot or a good place to hunt. S great is the twisting and misrepresentation done by the NRA and ther gun lobbying minions, that the average citizen out in the far west of

at least the average hunter, I think, is fearful that this gun legislation is going to stop his way of life, is going to stop him from taking his son or his brother or going out on a fishing trip or a hunting trip, is going to make it impossible for him to continue the way of life which he has enjoyed from childhood and generation. That is a completely false and twisted misinterpretation done deliberately, I submit, Mr. Chairman, by those who are more interested in getting the advertising revenues of gun manufacturers and ammunition manufacturers than they are in presenting the true facts to the sportsmen of America.

I have been shooting all my life. I went to the duck blind with my father when I was less than 9 years of age. I have shotguns in my closet that have been handed down to me from my great grandfather, flintlock type. This legislation is not in the least going to affect the law abiding sportsmen in the United States. The misrepresentation done by the NRA is tragic, because it has misled completely the sportsmen of our country. Typical of the NRA's inaccurate and irresponsible misrepresentations is this statement from its mass mailing to 800,000 members on February 2, 1967, which, incidentally, included handy instructions on how to write your Congressmen against the bill. The mailing stated:

"This legislation would prohibit outright the interstate sale of handguns, rifles and shotguns to individuals." That statement is a complete misrepresentation of the fact. There is nothing in this bill which would prohibit any sportsman anywhere in the United States from crossing any State line from buying a rifle or shotgun wherever he wished. That statement is just not true. And yet it was framed and patterned and the paragraph is such so as to completely twist the thrust and the effect of this legislation, and to completely, I submit, mislead the honest sportsmen of the United States.

As a lifetime hunter and sports shooter I particularly resent it. Nothing in this bill puts an unreasonable burden on any sportsman or hunter.

In view of the long acquaintance of the NRA with this bill and its very similar predecessors, it is inconceivable that this statement against the bill could have been made for any reason other than to unfairly inflame and distort the legitimate concern of hunters and sportsmen.

Then in the May issue of the magazine, the American Rifleman, the NRA reached an all-time low in taste and a peak in hysteria against better law enforcement and better gun laws. In a lead editorial entitled "Who Guards America's Homes," the NRA asked what would happen if a race riot broke out somewhere while every Army combat unit in the entire National Guard were overseas in a major war. Ignoring the fact that aside from Reserve divisions held in this country during war such as those used to deal with the Detroit riots in 1943, thousands of soldiers would be in training here during a major war, the NRA asked who then guards the doors of American homes from the senseless savagery and pillaging. They know just as well as everyone here knows that the legitimate law enforcement officials,. the police force, the National Guard, and if need be your Federal troops.