LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD Harris, Raymond I., coroner, St. Louis County, Mo., to Senator Dodd, STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD Citizens Committee on Natural Resources, 1346 Connecticut Avenue, NW., Washington, D.C., by Spencer M. Smith, Jr., secretary. Federal Cartridge Corp., 2700 Foshay Tower, Minneapolis, Minn., by Hornady Manufacturing Co., Grand Island, Nebr., by Joyce W. Hornady. Krug, Alan S., natural resources economist, University Park, Pa... - Liberty Lobby, 300 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, D.C., by K. J. Cullinane, research director.. Rorschach, Harold E., 321 South Boston, Tulsa, Okla. Shutt, G. Marvin, on behalf of the National Sporting Goods Association.. Smith, Rabbi Harold P., Chicago, Ill., representing Rabbinical Council of American (headquarters: 84 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.) and the Chicago Board of Rabbis (headquarters: 72 East 11th Street, Chicago, Steinberg, David J., 7216 Stafford Road, Alexandria, Va.. Sargent, Raymond, L., chairman, Legislative Committee, Texas State Sensible Firearms Legislation Committee of Duchess County, by Mr. Ray- mond Tompkins, chairman, Post Office Box 251, Hortontown Road, Hopewell Junction, N. Y., to the Committee on the Judiciary.. Thompson, H. L., Jr., president, National Wholesale Hardware Associa- 820 Walker, Robert Craighead, 7 Bay Street, Berlin, Md. White, Ernest P., Jr., 14852 Union Avenue, San Jose, Calif Whittington, George R., 505 Amarillo Building, Amarillo, Tex Williams Gun Sight Co., Davison, Mich., by Boyd R. Williams, Secretary- ARTICLES SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD "Proposed Federal Legislation to Control the Interstate Sale of Firearms" which appears on page 58 of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, July 1964, submitted by Mr. Fred N. Fishman, chairman, Committee on Federal Legislation, the Association of the Bar of the "The Truth About Guns" by Robert M. Price, 115 East Moltke, Daly City, Calif., constituent of J. Arthur Younger, 11th District, California, FEDERAL FIREARMS ACT WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 1965 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON JUVENILE DELINQUENCY Washington, D.C. The subcommittee (composed of Senators Dodd, Hart, Bayh, Burdick, Tydings, Hruska, Fong, and Javits) met, pursuant to call, at 10:10 a.m., in room 318, Old Senate Office Building, Senator Thomas J. Dodd presiding. Present: Senators Dodd, Burdick, Fong and Javits. Also present: Carl L. Perian, staff director; Gene Gleason, editorial director; William C. Mooney, chief investigator; Peter W. Velde, assistant to Senator Hruska, and Gerry H. Manges, assistant to Senator Ja vits. Senator Dood. I will call this hearing to order. It is a resumption, really, of previous hearings held on this subject. Today we will take testimony on the merits of Senate bill 1592, a proposal by President Lyndon Johnson to regulate the sale of firearms in interstate commerce. This bill is a major part of the President's legislative package to Congress designed to bring under control the explosive ci ime problem in this country. The bill was proposed by President Johnson after analyzing the abuses of the Federal gun statutes which became law more than a generation ago. It appears those abuses have resulted in a runaway gun problem in this country today S. 1592 was introduced by me on March 22, at the request of the President, and was cosponsored by Senator Tydings of this subcommittee, and Senators Douglas, Hartke, and Kennedy of New York. During these hearings, the committee intends to determine the total scope of the firearms problem in this country including the mailorder, over-the-counter, and interstate aspects. We will further determine if the legislation before us will best solve the problem. We intend to document in this record the contribution made by the proliferation of firearms to our burgeoning crime picture. We also intend to hear all reasonable and objective views with regard to the effects that this amendment would have on this Nation's firearms industry, our legitimate mail-order houses, and the millions of hunters and sportsmen. If, during these hearings, we develop information which indicates any provision of this legislation would place overly burdensome or undue hardships on responsible citizens. then these aspects will be given the most serious consideration. 1 There are those who would have us believe that there is no firearms problem in this country, in spite of overwhelming evidence that such a problem does exist and that it is growing. During 4 years of investigation, this subcommittee established a record which conclusively outlined, even to the most avid gun owners and enthusiasts, a serious mail-order problem in handguns. The information published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its annual Uniform Crime Reports gives further evidence of an everincreasing firearms problem in these United States. It also outlines the role played by rifles and shotguns in our homicide rate. From the Bureau's annual report for 1963, we find that: Of the 8,500 homicides that year, 56 percent were perpetrated by persons armed with firearms. Of this 56 percent, 10 percent were by rifle, 20 percent by shotgun, and 70 percent by handgun. From these figures, it is evident that the concealable firearm predominates as the weapon used in gun murders. However, I believe that we cannot overlook the fact that 30 percent of the firearms murders, or some 1,400 deaths, resulted from the criminal use of rifles and shotguns. Preliminary figures for the year 1964, which are to be released in July, indicate another increase in firearms homicides. The Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics prove that we are dealing not only with a problem of handgun misuse, but one which includes all firearms. I do not believe that we can exclude any type of firearm in the consideration of legislation. Therefore, I maintain that rifles and shotguns must be regulated if we hope to make inroads into this problem. In this regard, I would like to cite recent cases from our files covering just the last 6 weeks, in which rifles were used in the wanton taking of human lives, or the shooting of innocent persons by hidden snipers. In four of the cases, an immature youth was the assailant. In the fifth and sixth, the assailant has not been apprehended. On April 12, a 17-year-old youth, armed with a high-powered rifle, shot and killed three Texas fishermen near Corpus Christi, Tex. When apprehended by the police, he was armed with a .38 revolver and a tear-gas gun. His 16-year-old accomplice was also charged in the slaying. On April 17, an 8-year-old boy, who had just returned to his home in the Washington area with his parents, was shot in the shoulder by an unknown assailant who sped past the home and fired into it. On April 19, a high school youth was killed and another wounded at a crowded drive-in restaurant near San Francisco. The shots were fired from a speeding car by youths armed with a shotgun. On April 25, a 16-year-old boy sitting on a bluff overlooking a coastal highway in California, shot and killed three persons, including a 5year-old boy, and wounded six others before taking his own life with a high-powered Swedish rifle to which a sniperscope was affixed. On April 29, in Georgia, a 16-year-old student, apparently upset by poor grades, set up a sniper's nest high in a football stadium and fired 15 rounds from a high-powered rifle at 200 girls who were doing gymnastics on the field below. Miraculously no one was injured. On May 4, a 17-year-old youth was shot at by a sniper from a rooftop and critically wounded in Brooklyn, N.Y. It was the second time in less than 7 months that the youth had been wounded by a sniper. While the firearms which were misused in these cases were not mail order, the fact is that the vast and unregulated proliferation of all types of firearms misused by immature youths and irresponsible adults is part of the problem with which we are faced. When we consider the added attraction to the juvenile, the criminal, and the emotionally disturbed, of the secrecy of mail order, the problem becomes even more frightening. From the subpenaed files of Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago, the subcommittee, in cooperation with local police in several jurisdictions, has determined that mail-order rifles and shotguns have been sent to persons with criminal records in Chicago, Ill., in Dallas, Tex., in Philadelphia, Pa., in Los Angeles, Calif., in the State of New Jersey, and in the State of New York. The crimes of these mail-order purchasers of rifles and shotguns range in seriousness from misdemeanors to felonies and include assault, assault and battery, assault with a deadly weapon, assault by battery on a police officer, larceny, sex offenses, and narcotics and dangerous drug offenses. The information to which I have just referred proves-to me, anyway-the need for some measure of control over the interstate traffic in rifles and shotguns. And let no one forget, Lee Oswald used a mail-order rifle to assassinate President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. We have that same model displayed on the board in the rear of the room today. Let me also say that this study did not start or begin or commence as a consequence of that tragedy. The original bill had already been introduced by me in the Senate 3 to 4 months prior to the assassination of President Kennedy. There are critics who have said that this is a historical consequent of that assassination. This is completely untrue. The cases in our files illustrating the wanton and senseless taking of human life, evidence the fact that the rifle, or long arm, though primarily a sporting arm, is a lethal tool when misused. To exclude such firearms from regulation in the consideration of legislation would be the height of folly. How can any prudent and reasonable man maintain that we should not consider such firearms in our determinaton of a course of action? An important provision in the legislation before us today would prohibit a federally licensed dealer from selling firearms to a person from another State. That is an interesting point, and it is one concerning which gun enthusiasts have spread a lot of propaganda in the country. We had suspected for quite some time that persons who were unable to purchase guns legally in the District of Columbia would travel into neighboring counties to buy a gun over the counter with no questions asked. In order to see if this constituted a real problem, I asked the Treasury Department to examine the firearms records of selected dealers in nearby Maryland and Virginia to determine, first, the per 49-588-65 |