Now, this is a very unusual thing, because in one instance the honest citizen makes a record of it, and has no objection to doing it. But the dishonest citizen can avoid the law simply by crossing the State line.

Senator DODD. This is similar to what is going on here in the District of Columbia; people are going just a few miles into Maryland and buying weapons to circumvent the District law. It is going on in many parts of the country.

How do people feel about your registration laws? Do you meet with much opposition?

Mr. LYNCH. Our present registration law? We do not meet with much opposition at all. It is just a matter of business routine. In many years of experience, I have never heard of anybody trying to repeal it or even modify it.

Senator DODD. You know one of the arguments made by opponents of this bill is that it will lead to ultimate legal registration. Maybe it should. If this condition continues to worsen, I suppose the people of this country will demand it. I am interested in the reaction in your State to your law. You don't find anyone wanting to repeal it? Mr. LYNCH. Senator, I have been rather closely associated with the State legislature for a number of years and, of course, in my present position I am directly associated with them. I have never heard a suggestion that our registration law be repealed. As a matter of fact, at the moment, we are trying to tighten up our permit law. We have a rather, I consider a rather loose permit-to-carry law in California which we are trying to tighten. And I feel very confident that we will have it passed.

Senator DODD. I am glad to hear it. I think we need to have some tightening up of State laws. My own State of Connecticut just in the last 2 weeks has passed a tighter gun law, and I know that there are other States like California who are in the process of making such changes.

Mr. LYNCH. That gun that I gave you, the "Enforcer," we just passed, and I might say our legislators passed with enthusiasm one of the first bills going through the legislature, a law outlawing this type of weapon. We were caught on this because of the length of the barrel, so we had to modify our law in order to take this one in. Senator DODD. Is it fair to say that the registration law has helped to control the firearms traffic in your State?

Mr. LYNCH. It certainly has helped, Senator. And it has certainly furnished useful and valuable information to law enforcement officials. And I am sure that some of my colleagues here from the Los Angeles Police Department would be very capable of amplifying that. Senator DODD. I was simply interested in your comment on the fact that in California persons with quantities of weapons in these paramilitary groups have Federal firearms licenses. This is significant testimony. And here again we have run into a barrage of false information, but also a barrage of opposition to increasing the license fee.

Mr. LYNCH. I believe the license is only $1 at the present time.

Senator DODD. Did I understand correctly that you found a lot of these vigilantes and Minutemen that had Federal firearms licenses?

Mr. LYNCH. They have Federal gun dealers licenses which allows them to accumulate caches of guns.

I believe that Sergeant Gonzalez or perhaps Captain Howe can tell you of a school we have in California which teaches you how to become a gun dealer.

Senator DODD. I am interested in that, and I am sure the whole committee is.

Mr. Attorney General, we are very grateful to you for coming. This is very helpful and positive to the committee. And this committee will study it more carefully.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Senator. It has been a pleasure.
Senator DODD. Mr. Margrave?

Mr. Margrave is Director of the Office of the Munitions Control of the Department of State. He has had long experience in this field. And we are very anxious to hear your testimony.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT N. MARGRAVE, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MUNITIONS CONTROL, DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Mr. MARGRAVE. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Robert N. Margrave. I am the Director, Office of Munitions Control, Department of State.

By section 414 of the Mutual Security Act of 1954, as amended (22 U.S.C. 1934), the President is authorized to control the export and import of arms, ammunition, and implements of war. This control is to be exercised "in the furtherance of world peace and the security and foreign policy of the United States." The President is further "authorized to designate those articles which shall be considered as arms, ammunition, and implements of war." The President has delegated this authority, by Executive Order 10973, to the Secretary of State. Within the Department of State, the Office of Munitions Control has the functional responsibility for controlling the exportation and importation of munitions and this Office administers the control under the international traffic in arms regulations which went into effect on March 1, 1960.

Inclusion of this authority in the Mutual Security Act underscored the specific terms of the provision, and was consonant with the stated purpose of that act; namely, "to promote the security and foreign policy of the United States."

The preceding legislative authority, section 12 of the Neutrality Act of 1939, empowered the Secretary of State to issue import licenses. Section 414 of the Mutual Security Act permits the denial of imports when such action is necessary in the interest of national security or for eign policy. For example, it has been considered as contrary to our policy to permit the importation of arms from Soviet-bloc countries. since from a national security standpoint, it is clearly undesirable to support, by U.S. imports, the arms manufacturing capabilities of Soviet-bloc countries. This policy has been extended to exclude the importation of Soviet-bloc surplus weapons regardless of place of manufacture, where such weapons are identifiable as being of recent bloc ownership. While there are cogent arguments on both sides of this question, the Department opposes any action which would assist the bloc in its surplus arms disposal efforts.

Senator DODD. May I ask a question at this point?

I understand your testimony to be that it is illegal to import Sovietbloc arms in this country?

Mr. MARGRAVE. No, sir; it is not illegal, but it is contrary to the policy of the Department of State, and it has been since the end of World War II. It has certainly been since the time I have been associated with the Department of State.

Senator DODD. It is not allowed?

Mr. MARGRAVE. It is not.

Senator DODD. How do these items get in here? We have ample evidence of Soviet-bloc arms of all kinds in this country on sale at these mail-order houses. They are being bought and sold every day. If you have a policy that prevents this, how do these weapons get in here, sir?

Mr. MARGRAVE. From a logical point of view, there are two possibilities. One is that they are smuggled in the United States. We have little evidence of that.

And, second, that they may be coming in over the Canadian border. And there is, of course, no actual control of entry in respect to the Canadian border.

Senator DODD. Are we doing anything about this problem as to Canada, if that is where the trouble is? My own information is that it is far deeper and wider than that. I do not think it is just Canada, I think it is much more than that, don't you? Don't you know about these mail-order people who buy Soviet-bloc arms in Soviet-bloc countries and have them shipped to Western Germany and then import them?

Mr. MARGRAVE. Of course the Office of Munitions Control follows this closely, specifically the Hy Hunter case, of which the subcommittee is well aware.

Senator DODD. I do not think we are talking about the same thing. you familiar with this Tokarev semiautomatic rifle?

Are

Mr. MARGRAVE. I am not personally familiar with that, sir.

Senator DODD. It is a gun that is made by a Communist country— it is made in Russia, actually.

In 1962, Interarmco, which is one of the big gun companies, in this country, purchased 4,500 of these rifles, and they were purchased from the Finnish Defense Forces.

Now, how did this happen? What did you do about it?

Mr. MARGRAVE. Well, with respect to the purchase that may have been made or that was made by Interarmco from the Finnish Defense Forces, that purchase would necessarily have occurred outside the United States. We would have, of course, in the State Department only been concerned with respect to the matter of a proposed importation of these weapons.

Senator DODD. And you grant a license as I understand it. My impression is that 4,500 Soviet semiautomatic rifles were imported by Interarmco on January 2, 1962 under an Office of Munitions Control license. Now, if the policy is not to allow this, why did this happen? The license number we have is license No. 3451, issued October 11, 1961. And on January 2, 1962, we got 4,500 Soviet semiautomatic rifles in this country. And I understood you to say that this was not our policy. How do you square this?

Mr. MARGRAVE. The policy, sir, to which I referred covers two areas of munitions items. One, those which have been manufac tured in Soviet bloc countries in recent years; and (2), those which regardless of place of manufacture have been recently owned by Soviet bloc countries.

The particular weapon, sir, to which I believe you refer I recall vaguely may well have been manufactured prior to World War II, and in my memory had actually been captured by Finnish Defense Forces in the so-called winter war.

Now, I would not wish to be held to that precise fact, but I vaguely recall that.

Senator DODD. I would not advise you to be held to it. I do not think that is the fact at all. I think you should look into that.

The second item that troubles us is the purchase by this same gun company of a number of these antitank guns, a large number, also bought from the Finnish Defense Forces, 100 of them in April of 1960, that came in under a license issued by your office, and 50 more that same year under a license from your office, and 425 more under a license again issued by your office, and 424 in 1962 again under a license. Five hundred and fifty-six of these antitank guns that your office allowed to be imported here have been sold within this country to purchasers. And 443 of the antitank rifles are right across the river now in the inventory of this company and are for sale. I am not critical of you personally, but it does not seem to me to make sense to allow this sort of thing to go on. Do you think so? Mr. MARGRAVE. Well, sir, I can only address this specific matter in terms of the particular responsibilities of the State Department under the Mutual Security Act of 1954.

Senator DODD. Do you know that they located some of these Soviet semiautomatic rifles down in Selma when they had trouble there? There were some that had been brought in here under this license? There were 4 of them confiscated.

Mr. MARGRAVE. I think this is certainly one of the many reasons that S. 1592 is highly justified.

Senator DODD. I do too. It won't do us any good if the Office of Munitions Control issues licenses to a device of a third country. And I think that is what is going on. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure that these gun runners go to Europe, and they buy this Soviet bloc surplus military stuff. And they then ship it into a Western European country, and after that they have no problem bringing it in here. And it is an obvious evasion of the rules. Is there anything you can do about that?

Mr. MARGRAVE. Well, sir, if we have any positive evidence indicating recent ownership or manufacture since World War II by Soviet bloc entities, we deny the proposed importation, since the two factors of national security and foreign policy are immediately engaged. Senator DODD. What do you mean by recent?

Mr. MARGRAVE. In the case of the manufacturer, I regard-it has been my policy since I have been a Director that anything manufactured in Soviet bloc countries since World War II is recent. With respect to ownership of weapons-and these, of course, need not have been Soviet bloc manufacture, in point of fact we are aware of the fact that the Soviet bloc has been seeking to dispose of Western

manufactured arms for several years but since they are of comparative recent ownership, even though of Western type, as I indicated just a moment ago, it is contrary to our policy to assist them in any way in their disposal effort. So we deny the importation

there.

In the second case, where these are of Western manufacture the criterion of recent ownership we put at approximately 2 or 3 years. That is to say, if we can trace ownership back 2 to 3 years to any Soviet bloc entity, we deny the importation.

That attribute has been adopted, or that criterion has been adopted, for the simple reason that it has turned out to be extremely difficult and indeed impossible to trace back ownership earlier than 2 or 3 years.

Senator DODD. By recent, do you mean since World War II?

Mr. MARGRAVE. Insofar as manufacture is concerned, sir, that is

correct.

Senator DODD. Most of this stuff that we know about in this country, the majority of it anyway is, I would say, 25 or 30 years old. So that would go back beyond your marking point. So your policy, then, does not get at these surplus firearms.

Mr. MARGRAVE. The purpose of the Department's policy in this field, sir, is to preclude the possibility of any benefit to Soviet-bloc countries either by enabling them to export newly manufactured material or recently owned material regardless of manufacture so as to avoid the possibility of an economic benefit, or benefit to their small arms producing industry.

Senator DODD. Don't you think it helps some when they are able to sell their 30-year-old military weapons?

Mr. MARGRAVE. Oh, yes, sir. If we are able to trace it back in any way to their disposal efforts, we deny it.

Senator DODD. Have you made an effort to trace any of it?

Mr. MARGRAVE. Yes, sir; through our embassy and consulates abroad, and through the use of appropriate intelligence agencies; yes, sir.

Senator DODD. You know today that a lot of it is military surplus, do you not? Our files are filled with information on this.

Well, go ahead.

Mr. MARGRAVE. To continue with my statement, it should be observed at this point, however, that the present U.S. munitions list does not include as arms under the import control of the Secretary of State, either shotguns or firearms using only caliber 22 rimfire ammunition. Shotguns and .22 rimfire weapons can and do come into the United States from Soviet-bloc countries.

Senator DODD. I want to read you a letter which is in our files, written on the stationery of Hy Hunter, Inc., Firearms Manufacturing Co. of Hollywood, Calif. It is written to a man in Germany. It is the original letter. We subpenaed this last year.

DEAR MR. GRAETZ: Under separate cover, I am air-mailing you a copy of a new catalog book that has been recently published here in the United States. I think it will be of great help to you in making up your own new catalog. It is very important for you to read very carefully the comments of the author in the very beginning of the book. Look at page VII, the third paragraph at the bottom of the page where he says the following: "Evidently, guns made in Soviet countries but purchased in free foreign countries such as