(The information referred to was marked "Exhibit No. 136" and is as follows:) EXHIBIT No. 136 TABLE 2-PERCENT OF ARRESTS ACCOUNTED FOR BY DIFFERENT AGE GROUPS, 1965 Source: FBI, Uniform Crime Reports Section, unpublished data. Estimates for total U.S. population. Senator TYDINGS. I have no further questions. Chairman DODD. Thank you very much, Mr. Attorney General, for your splendid performance and highly intelligent testimony. It has been very helpful. We will recess until 2:30. (Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m. the committee was recessed, to reconvene at 2:30 p.m. on the same day.) AFTERNOON SESSION Chairman DODD. The hearing will be in order. As I understand it, Senator Thurmond has some questions he would like to ask you. Senator THURMOND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. STATEMENT OF HON. RAMSEY CLARK, THE ATTORNEY GENERAL— Resumed Senator THURMOND. General Clark, the burden of your statement seems to be directed toward keeping firearms out of the hands of the criminal element and out of the hands of a large category of people, including mental defectives, habitual drunkards, and those below a certain age. The first of the seven enumerated provisions of the bill you have testified in favor of would entirely prohibit interstate mailorder sale of all firearms. Would it not be possible to control mail-order sales to the extent that it would not be necessary to entirely prohibit them? Attorney General CLARK. In our judgment, based upon our experience and study, by far the more effective and efficient technique is to prohibit them. If you try to be selective, you run into exceedingly difficult problems of administration and enforcement. We also feel that the prohibition provides full opportunity for people within a State, who the officials of the State think are competent to have guns, to do so. Senator THURMOND. The approach of Amendment 90 to S. 1 of the mail-order sale of firearms to individuals is to entirely prohibit them. This section of the bill relies for its constitutional validity upon the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, does it not? Attorney General CLARK. That is right, sir. Senator THURMOND. In your view, General Clark, does the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce also include the power to completely prohibit interstate commerce? Attorney General CLARK. It depends upon the specification of what you are talking about, Senator Thurmond. This does not prohibit all interstate commerce in firearms, of course. It restricts it to licensed persons. Senator THURMOND. I recognize of course that Congress can prohibit the shipment in interstate commerce of goods not manufactured in accordance with the regulations of Congress, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, or the Child Labor Act. But are you convinced that Congress has the power to totally prohibit interstate commerce in this way when no violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act or the Child Labor Act or other such acts are involved? Attorney General CLARK. This is a regulation of interstate commerce rather than a prohibition, because it permits and contemplates interstate firearms transportation between licensees. Senator THURMOND. But this bill would prohibit altogether, would it not, the amendment? Chairman DODD. If the Senator would yield, I think it would regulate interstate commerce in firearms. Senator THURMOND. Could Congress prohibit certain classes of individuals from traveling from State to State, basing this action al-o on the regulation of interstate commerce? Attorney General CLARK. Yes, it could prohibit the movement of people from State to State for certain specified unlawful purposes. Senator THURMOND. You think Congress does have the right to prohibit certain classes of individuals from traveling from State to State, based on the regulation of interstate commerce? Attorney General CLARK. That is such a broad question-prisoners, for instance? Senator THURMOND. Would you give us an illustration of that? Attorney General CLARK. I have not said that Congress can prohibit certain classes of persons. You will have to tell me what you mean by certain classes of persons. Prisoners, yes I would say you can say prisoners cannot go from State to State. But that is hardly relevant to the constitutionality of this measure. Chairman DODD. Neither can kidnapers. Attorney General CLARK. If you call that a class of person. I do not know what the Senator means by a class of person. Certainly as I said earlier, you can prohibit interstate movement of people for specific purposes, such as kidnaping and carrying stolen property. Senator THURMOND. Well, that goes to a violation of the law. Now, do you consider it necessary to completely prohibit over-thecounter sale of handguns to nonresidents of the State where the sale is made? Attorney General CLARK. That is a most important part of this bill. Senator THURMOND. And you feel that is constitutional, and the most important part of this bill? Attorney General CLARK. I said a most important part of this bill. It is clearly constitutional in my legal judgment. Senator THURMOND. Could not the same objectives be reached by requiring the sales to conform with the laws of the residence of the purchaser? Attorney General CLARK. As a practical matter I think it would be ineffective and inefficient by that procedure. Senator THURMOND. General Clark, why do you consider it necessary to completely prohibit the import of military surplus handguns? Would imported military surplus handguns necessarily be any worse than U.S. military surplus handguns. Attorney General CLARK. There are a number of considerations there including the quality of the manufacture and the safety of the weapon. I think we have to keep in mind, too, that the military is not disposing of surplus handguns to the civilian population. So there is no comparison to be made. Senator THURMOND. Well, is a gun simply because it is imported any more dangerous than a gun manufactured in this country, or distributed in this country? Attorney General CLARK. It can be. It depends on the weapon. We have a pretty high quality of manufacture in many of our firearms. There are inferior manufacturers in many parts of the world. But as I pointed out there is no disposition of surplus military handguns to the civilian population of the United States, so there is no comparison to draw. Senator DODD. If the Senator would yield, he would be interested perhaps that we have heard in Detroit that among the weapons seized are the Omega, the Rohm, the Derringer, the Enfield, the Berretta. I think these are considered to be dangerous and even the NRA has refused to test some of them because of their likelihood of exploding on testing. So there are a lot of these in the country. I am not trying to interfere with the Attorney General's testimony, but he pointed out well that many of these imported surplus firearms are very dangerous to use in any respect. Senator THURMOND. Well, General Clark, of course you have dangerous firearms manufactured in this country, too, don't you? Attorney General CLARK. Surely we do. All firearms are dangerous, and have to be used most carefully by competent people. But I do not believe that we want this country to be the dumping ground for used military surplus firearms that could readily flood the country. And we are not disposing of military surplus weapons to the civilian population in the United States. Senator THURMOND. Well, of course we have a Federal law, the National Firearms Act, that controls most of this, do we not? And I heartly agree, for instance, that we should curb the traffic in the socalled destructive devices, such as the rockets, grenades, bazookas, mines, and so forth. Attorney General CLARK. Well, that is good, in that we have agreement at least to that extent. We feel it is also necessary as to these other weapons which are very dangerous. Senator THURMOND. The States have gun laws-most of the States, don't they? All of them, in fact, have gun laws. Attorney General CLARK. I would not say all of them or anything like all of them have effective gun laws. We have eight States, I believe, that have a fairly significant law that would require-what we would call a positive control. But this is all in the record many times already, and has been considered through the years by the committee. There are eight States, that have what we call positive control laws. Senator THURMOND. What does that mean-allowed to have no guns at all, like New York City? Attorney General CLARK. No, it just means you have to have a permit to purchase. These states include... Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Virginia. Senator THURMOND. There is nothing to keep these States from passing any type of gun law they want to, is there? Attorney General CLARK. No, as long as they do not violate the Constitution of the United States or their own constitution. That has not been in issue. But there is nothing the State can do to protect itself from the conduct in sister States. And that is why we have the Federal Government; that is why it must act as to interstate commerce, and until we act as to interstate commerce in the transportation of firearms, the States will not be effective with their legislation. Senator THURMOND. Well, I am certainly in favor of making it unlawful to mail firearms into a State in violation of the State and local laws. If we pass a Federal law to this effect, would this not be sufficient, rather than to pass a Federal law that would override the State laws-because in some States they need a stricter law than others? The Senator from Colorado testified this morning-Colorado would not necessarily need the same type law New York State would need. But Colorado can well use the assistance of the Federal Government in the matter of assisting in the violation of the State law-by making it unlawful to ship arms into Colorado that do not conform to the State law. Why would you wish to impose on the people of Colorado a law they do not want and do not need, simply because some other State may need it, and the other State can pass its own laws, if they need it. Attorney General CLARK. The interstate transportation and the interstate movement of people to buy and transport guns can only be effectively controlled by the Federal Government. This statute will not interfere with the State's determination as to the degree of control that they need to exercise within their State as to their own citizens. In my judgment, the concept of S. 1 Amendment No. 90 is much closer to John C. Calhoun's theory as expressed in his disposition on government than is yours, because it provides for a Federal function, Federal enforcement in interstate areas, and it leaves purely to the States, what they do within their areas, which those very few exceptions that Senator Hruska and I discussed this morning as to age, felons, and State law. Senator THURMOND. On page 21 of Amendment 90 the Secretary of the Treasury or his delegate is empowered to enter the premises, including places of storage, of any firearms and ammunition importer, manufacturer or dealer during business hours for the purpose of inspecting our examining records or documents required to be kept in pursuance to this act. In your judgment, General Clark, what effect will the two recent Supreme Court decisions in the cases of See v. Seattle and Camara v. San Francisco have on this provision? Attorney General CLARK. I do not believe they will have any effect on this provision, Senator Thurmond. This provision is comparable to provisions found in many Federal statutes. It is a typical recordkeeping, record-inspection provision. It is found in legislation that has far more distant proximity to public safety than the use of dangerous things such as guns. Senator THURMOND. Under these decisions, would a warrant be required? Attorney General CLARK. No, sir. This is a licensing provision, and the licensee is subject to the conditions of the license as imposed by the Congress of the United States. Senator THURMOND. General Clark, you quoted from a 1963 FBI report about easy accessibility of firearms. In the first place, the report had reference to handguns, not rifles and shotguns. If the FBI does not see a threat in the rifle traffic, why should the Justice Department wish to prohibit the mail-order purchase of rifles? Attorney General CLARK. Well, the report speaks for itself. My recollection-and we ought to get it right from the report-is that Director Hoover said he thought that our failure to act was a disgrace. The Department of Justice is firmly convinced that we need to act with regard to rifles and shotguns as well as handguns. I think the recent tragedies in several of our northern cities is as good evidence as any reasonable person would want on this subject. Chairman DODD. Excuse me, Senator. I just wanted to make this suggestion. Our staff people tell me that as a result of their conferences with the police officials in Detroit in the last few days, they found a great increase in the use of the long gun in the sniper fire. Attorney General CLARK. Sniper fire basically is done with long guns. That is the weapon of the sniper. It is more accurate at distances. Senator THURMOND. General Clark, you also alluded to other FBI statistics. But I suggest that none of these tend to prove a correlation between accessibility of firearms and the increase in serious crime. Let me call your attention to the 1965 FBI Report, the Uniform Crime Reports of 1965. The rates of occurrence for 100,000 population. In the New England region as a whole, murder was 2.1. In Massachusetts, where you have strict regulations on the purchase and have to have a permit for guns, murder was 2.4 percent. The New England region as a whole, aggravated assault was 43.6 percent. In Massachusetts, with its strict laws, aggravated assault was 50.7 percent. In the mid-Atlantic region, murder, 4 percent. In New York, where you have to have permission to purchase, and to have to have a permit to possess a gun, it was higher than that, 4.6 percent. Aggravated assault mid-Atlantic region, 97.4 percent. In New York, with its strict laws, it was 117.5 percent. This shows that even in Massachusetts, which has a strict law, you had a higher percentage of murder and a higher percent of aggravated assault than you had in the Mid-Atlantic States, which does not have such strict laws. And in New York City you had a higher percentage of murder and a higher percent of aggravated assault than you had in the mid-Atlantic States, which does not have strict laws. How do you account for that? Attorney General CLARK. I think you are comparing unlikes. Attorney General CLARK. You have to compare the conduct of people and the methods of reporting. . . . The statistical quality varies tremendously with different jurisdictions. |