for correcting existing firearms legislation as it pertains to the interstate commerce of pistols and revolvers in violation of State and local laws. This outlook is shared by millions of Americans who own and use firearms for sport and other legitimate purposes. Hunters, skeet, trap, and target shooters, as well as those who possess firearms for defense of home, business, and property, are appalled by the violent and irrational acts of the mentally disturbed, the criminally inclined, addicts, and other undesirables. They, too, like other wellintentioned persons everywhere, desire to rid our society of criminal acts of all kinds.

Like any other citizen or group of citizens, however, hunters and other firearms users have a right to request and a right to expect that applicable laws, rules, and regulations hold the certainty of effective and equitable enforcement. Unworkable and impractical laws provide no more deterrent to the use of firearms in crime than inadequate laws provide relief or corrective action in any other situation. We know from long experience in areas where such ineffective laws have been enacted in the past that the criminal use of firearms cannot and I will not be deterred. It would be absurd for the Congress to take steps that would penalize the law-abiding citizen and yet make no effective contribution toward the reduction of armed crime.

Proposals that are more window dressing than substance, that merely reflect earlier and disproven laws, and that threaten to invade individual rights will not have the support of hunters, target shooters, and other firearms users. This has been shown, time and time again, on National, State, and local levels. And no law, no matter how sound or restrictive, will have any influence on criminals whatsoever.

The Nation's shooters and law enforcement groups thought they had a supportable bill in S. 1975, as originally introduced. That bill was developed during more than 2 years of study and perfection in consultation with law enforcement groups, juvenile authorities, and experienced and sincere representatives of national shooting organizations. But the amendments offered abruptly by the principal sponsor of S.1975-without consulting with the many individuals and groups that helped to draft the original bill-would change the scope of that proposal considerably. So hurriedly were these amendments prepared, it appears, that their author was obliged to offer further amendments to avert serious questions about their constitutionality.

Change has been proposed upon change in rapid succession, Mr. Chairman, and I sincerely doubt that more than a few of our fellow Americans really understand the present nature of the bill before the committee.

Many shooters understood and accepted S. 1975, as introduced, and they were prepared to support it. They accepted the original bill because it pertained only to the interstate shipment and delivery by common carrier of handguns to juveniles under the age of 18; because it required a statement from a prospective purchaser of a handgun regarding his age, name, address, record, and compliance with State and local law; because it refrained from requiring the police, or any public office, to maintain a list of the serial numbers and kinds of firearms purchased and possessed by citizens; because it did not seek to vest in the police discretion to determine who may and who may not purchase and own a firearm; and because it avoided making ownership of a firearm contingent upon the payment of special fees or taxes.

All of these reasons for supporting the original S. 1975 are sound and valid, conservationists believe. They were expressed to the committee by Senator Hickenlooper, Congressman John D. Dingell, the National Rifle Association of America, the National Wildlife Federation, and others. Any action that may be taken by this committee, to substantially alter S. 1975 in any way, and especially in regard to the principles outlined above, should be considered in the light of further hearings to obtain more of the public's reaction.

There was reprinted in the Congressional Record several weeks ago an article that linked the reputed low incidence of murder by firearms in England with strict firearms registration laws. The article noted that murder by firearms carried a more severe punishment than murder by knife or poison, a rather incredible distinction, if true, and certainly one of no consolation to the victim. Many sportsmen and other conscientious citizens are greatly disturbed by recommendations that we have more severe penalties in all firearms cases. Experience shows that judges and courts frequently release offenders rather than impose mandatory penalties that they deem to be excessive and unreasonable. There would be little salutary effect in reducing armed crime if the penalties were such that they would not be upheld by the courts.

29-119-64-21

The logic of this position is demonstrated by an article, "More Convictions Bring Fewer Imprisonments," in the Washington Post and Times Herald for January 19, 1964. Citing an official report of the Department of Justice, the article disclosed that a major cause of the prison population decline is the coatinuing efforts of Federal judges to seek alternatives to imprisonment. The article revealed that there were 1,300 more convictions in 1963 as compared to 1962, but 2,400 fewer imprisonments. The judges' efforts in averting imprisonment, the Justice Department report declared, might soon end severe overcrowding in penitentiaries. The effect of this leniency on crime is not discussed.

We think the answer to deterring crimes of all kinds depends upon better support of existing laws by the judges and the courts. There probably is not a police force in the country that does not need more manpower and appropriations. A number of States, with the sportsmen's support, have enacted laws that make possible stronger penalties for the accidental or careless handling of firearms while hunting. But even in this area, and in the sentencing of persons found guilty of deliberate and willful violation of game conservation laws, the judges and courts seldom assess maximum sentences. The example of full and just sentences, not the threat of sentencing, will help reduce crime.

A more objective comment on the incidence of murder by firearms in England, I believe, is that there are fewer murders of all kinds, compared to the United States.

England's firearms registration law, we must never forget, laid that proud nation open to attack and invasion in the early days of World War II. By needless regulation, their citizens were stripped of sporting firearms and ammunition, well in advance of the outbreak of the war. And as a result, few Englishmen had firearms and fewer still knew how to use them. So great was their peril, and so vulnerable were that free people to invasion from the continent, that they had to call for help. The sportsmen of America responded by giving handguns, rifles, shotguns, and ammunition so that people who had thoughtlessly disarmed themselves could look to their own protection. How careless and how nearly tragic that a free people would render themselves unprepared to rise in their own defense.

Winston Churchill, in his second volume on World War II, "Their Finest Hour," called "The great consignment of rifles and guns, together with their ammunition, which are now approaching this country are entirely on a different level from anything else we have transported across the ocean except the Canadian Division itself. The convoys approaching on July 31 are unique, and a special effort should be made to insure their safe arrival. The loss of these rifles and field guns would be a disaster of the first order."

America's sportsmen have demonstrated in the past few weeks, as they have before, that they are agreeable to reasonable firearms legislation. But at the same time they are not going to be swayed by emotional and unreasoning persons from their knowledge that the firearm-like the automobile, kitchen knife, poison, rock, club, rolling pin-is merely an instrument that may be used in crime rather than the reason for crime. Weapons do not create crime; crime creates weapons. A study of all violent crimes in 1960, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, "indicates that almost half of them were by cutting and stabbing. Only one-eighth of these assaults were accomplished were accomplished with a firearm of any kind."

Crime is spawned by depressing surroundings, by ignorance, greed, passion, drunkenness, addiction, lack of supervision, mental imbalance, poverty, unemployment, and any of the other facets of human environment that tear at, distort, and control the minds of weak men. It is the person enmeshed in the grasp of these social ills-the user of the instrument-and not the club, pipe, gun, knife, or other manufactured or natural weapon, who is both the problem and the starting point for remedial action.

Much of our society and its media of communication seem dedicated to glorifying the bizarre and the irregular. Any one of us can, and I am sure some do, sit in his living room before a television set and witness violent murder a dozen times a week. TV programing is full of it-gangsters, robbers, addicts, and drunks, all bent on braining, clubbing, shooting, choking, or otherwise maiming their fellow man. Is it any wonder that crime is so prevalent?

The largest national audience in the history of television, according to the commentators and newspapers, was eyewitness to the first live TV firearms murder in Dallas just a few weeks ago, courtesy of the local police in their own jail where the victim had been taken for protective custody.

Examine the comic strips. A number of them, carried by newspapers here in Washington as well as in other cities throughout the country, and offered as entertainment for children, feature murder and gore as their daily fare. Bordering on the immoral, suggestive, and flagrantly ungrammatical, they make mockery of teaching in the home and in the school.

Right now, a few weeks after Christmas, you can travel through any residential area in this country and see youngsters outfitted in commando gear, wearing belts with simulated hand grenades and knives, and carrying plastic machineguns. These same toys and many others crowd the display counters in mountainous heaps while store managers grind out Christmas music devoted to peace on earth and good will to men. Those faithful reproductions of the instruments of mass death grace the Nation's living rooms by the millions at a time of the year, ironically, when we honor the Prince of Peace.

The attached news article, from the "Montgomery County Sentinel" and dated December 19, 1963, comments more fully on this point. It is submitted for the committee's information and for inclusion in the hearing record.

If the Congress, the State legislatures, and the law enforcement and social worker groups want to make a positive and lasting contribution toward reducing crime, Mr. Chairman, then I suggest that they turn their attention to the fields in which the seeds of that violence are sown and nurtured.

Firearms should not be made scapegoat to sow a nation's remorse at the senseless murder of its President. And firearms should not bear the brunt of the blame, either, because of a nation's reluctance or failure to correct the social conditions that led to that horrible deed.

[From the Montgomery County Sentinel, Dec. 19, 1963]

SHELVES FILLED WITH MILITARY-TYPE TOYS THIS YULE-MANUFACTURERS OFFERING WEAPONS THAT ANNIHILATE

While department store public address systems throughout the county and country serenade customers with angelic choirs singing of "peace on earth, good will to men," Mr. and Mrs. J. D. Public are carefully selecting as Christmas gifts for their youngsters, such things as a toy guerrilla-type scatter gun guaranteed to "mow 'em down as soon as you set 'em up.'

And if that doesn't meet with their satisfaction, they can buy him a fully automatic 50-shot machinegun so that he can be a "combat-ready guerrilla fighter."

And, if they are afraid that little Janey will be left out of the play, they can always buy her a combat nurse outfit, complete with candy "sulfa” pills and a play hypodermic needle, so she can treat her "combat-ready" friends.

True, it's all in play, but it hardly echoes the sentiments of that Christmas carol or those of the season.

The fact that warlike toys and the demand for them have increased greatly this Christmas, has caused many parents, concerned with possible psychological damage they may create, to be up in arms.

For example, a group of 10 families in the Morristown, N.J., area are conducting a telephone and letter-writing campaign against toys that represent "instruments of war and destruction."

And if you think they are exaggerating, go down to your nearest toy store and take a look.

You'll find a missile-firing cannon, in all sizes, which is advertised as having pushbutton and electric controls that "puts everything under your fingertips," and all types of long-range bazookas with an exploding pillbox and "three harmless rockets."

Also ready-made combat kits with hand grenades, and if you've got a son who has everything in this line, there is always the exploding road set which advertisers "the road really blows up," and to prove it the front cover shows a jeep plus several soldiers being blown to bits.

Times have changed as have our methods of warfare and so it seems our toys have reflected these changes.

Is this teaching youngsters about the desirability of the world remaining at peace?

Dr. Lois Barclay Murphy, a child psychologist at the famous Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kans., reports in a recent magazine article there are

better ways, such as games, for a boy to develop masculinity, without encouraging war-like attitudes at a time when the world faces destruction.

Dr. Michael B. Rothenburg, clinical professor of child psychology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and director of children's psychiatric services' at Beth El Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., reports in another magazine, “What the war toy manufacturers are doing is exploiting the world's agony in the most cold blooded fashion.

"They are not concerned with what they are doing to the child's psyche," he continues, "or, for that matter, to the world. If children must release aggressive emotions, they should do it against bowling pins or dart boards, not against human effigies or the symbols of civilization."

Other psychologists differ, noting that there is nothing wrong with developing aggressiveness.

One noted that "playing is preparation for adult life. When boys play with toy guns, they are preparing to use real guns when they go into military service." The same psychologist added, "after all, this is not a gentle Tahitian world, It's a rough, tough, competitive society."

Toy manufacturing is a big business. Twenty-eight manufacturers are currently competing with half a dozen importers, and one of the largest grossed nearly $14 million last year.

Whether or not there is need for Federal controls on the industry will have to wait until a definitive study is done on the subject.

Meanwhile, toy manufacturers are coming out with more and more realistic toys that are guaranteed to do more and more destructive things.

WASHINGTON ARMS COLLECTORS, INC.,
Seattle, Wash., January 24, 1964.

Re statement for the record of the hearings on amendments to the National and Federal Firearms Acts held by the Commerce Committee of the U.S. Senate.

Hon. CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE:

It is requested that the following statement be incorporated into the record of your committee's hearings:

1. No restrictive firearm laws have ever disarmed the criminal-for the manifestly indisputable reason that:

(a) A criminal contemplating an armed felony will understandably ignore the secondary and lesser violation of a firearms law. Witness the armed crimes in New York City after 50 years of drastic Sullivan gun laws. Witness the armed robberies in England after decades of strictest firearm prohibition. Witness the underground in Europe during World War II risking firing squads just for possessing arms.

(d) When unable to obtain a firearm through theft or other devious means, a criminal will manufacture a firearm. Witness the homemade "zipguns" of juvenile gangs.

2. Restrictive firearm laws only disarm the honest citizens and assure the criminal of defenseless victims for the obvious reason that:

(a) An honest citizen will be most reluctant to go through the redtape, waste of time, expenditure of money, and humiliating procedures in order to obtain a firearm.

(b) He will depend on protection by the police, which, since the disappearance of the foot patrolman who was on the beat and readily available while the crime was being committed, will today be found cruising in distant squad cars and physically unable to arrive on the scene until after the crime has been committed.

3. Therefore restrictive firearm laws factually facilitate and promote crime, achieving the direct opposite of their intended purpose: This is clearly evident from the facts that:

(a) An armed criminal undertakes felonies on the prime assumption that his victims will be unarmed. This the restrictive firearms laws conveniently arrange for him. His greatest deterrent fear, however, remains that of encountering armed resistance.

(b) In the few cases where his intended victims do happen to be armed, the greater majority of such confrontations usually result in the capture and arrest of the criminal (see the dozens of cases in the "Armed Citizen" feature in the

monthly issue of the American Rifleman published by the National Rifle Association).

(c) In the past few decades along with the increase in the number and variety of "firearms laws" there has been a tremendous increase (instead of decrease) in armed felonies.

4. With particular reference to the National and Federal firearm acts, further amending of these laws is not advisable: These two acts have been studied and amended many times in the past and are already much too restrictive with reference to interstate shipment through their requirements of punitively costly licensing and "transfer taxes." Are citizens not being punitively taxed beyond all normally civilized or rational concepts of taxation already?

5. The basic unconstitutionality of these two acts and amendments thereto should be considered: Entirely aside from article II of the Bill of Rights, such prohibitions and punitive taxation are an infringment on property rights of citizens for instance in the settlement of their estates containing firearms collections worth tens of thousands of dollars as well as under many other circumstances. Faithfully yours,

A. A. DE CARRIERE, Chairman, Legislative Committee.

HIGHLAND PARK,

Senator WARREN G. MAGNUSON,

Lake County, Ill., January 23, 1964.

Chairman, U.S. Senate, Committee on Commerce,
Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.

(Attention of Mr. William T. Beeks).

DEAR SIR: I have been connected with police work for the past 25 years, and for a period of 8 years have been the chief of police in a community of 30,000 people located 25 miles from the center of the second largest city in the United States, Chicago, Ill.

I have been a life member of the National Rifle Association since 1947. I am a member of the Illinois Rifle Pistol Association and a sponsor for the Highland Park Rifle & Pistol Association. I have been connected with firearms as a participant in handgun shooting; as an instructor and as a promoter for competitive pistol shooting since 1940. I am a veteran of both World War II and the Korean conflict and hold a commander's commission in the U.S. Naval Reserve.

Because of the above background and experience I feel that I can speak with a fairly sound degree of personal knowledge of firearms and police problems involving violent crimes in our growing urban and suburban areas. During my service as a police officer it has unavoidably been my lot to come in contact with and observe a significant number of armed criminals. I have formed conclusions based upon this experience, and while the conclusions may differ from those held by eminent legislative authorities and experts on the theoretical aspects of crime, these products of my own experience have the useful advantage of being close to the real and practical world in which I live and in which police forces and local law-enforcement agencies in the United States operate.

Also during these 25 years and my experiences in the military, I have seen the benefits derived from the private citizen having had the advantage of owning and learning how to respect and shoot firearms.

During both the Korean conflict and World War II many recruits seldom received enough training in the use of the weapons they carried to the frontlines to adequately and properly defend their lives or to overcome the enemy, which was their purpose in being there. It was easy to spot those men who had owned and had training in the use of firearms prior to their military service. Personally, I owe my life to this experience and training, which I got at home and not in the military service.

As a law-enforcement officer I have seen the advantages of the average citizen in protecting himself and his castle from the ruthless criminal who, when trapped, will resort to any violence to escape.

I understand that the principal features of Senator Dodd's bill (S. 1975) have been agreed upon by most of the parties interested in one way or another as legislation to deter the use of firearms by criminals, with one exception: the provision affecting interstate and mail-order sales according to which a copy of the buyer's affidavit is to be sent to the "highest local police authority" named