FEDERAL FIREARMS ACT TUESDAY, JULY 20, 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 2:25 p.m., in room 318, Old Senate Office Building, Senator Thomas. J. Dodd presiding. Present: Senators Dodd and Burdick. Also present: Carl L. Perian, staff director; and William C. Mooney, chief investigator. Senator DODD. The hearing is called to order. Today we are continuing hearings regarding the need for tightening up Federal firearms legislation to reduce the flagrant misuse of pistols and rifles by persons who are incapable of safe and responsible handling of these instruments of destruction. We have as our first witness a distinguished government official of the State of California, Mr. Hale Champion, who is also uniquely qualified to testify on this subject because of a harrowing personal experience to which he, his wife, and his 19-month-old daughter were subjected by armed bandits. I have looked forward to the testimony of Mr. Champion because he can tell our good citizens who still feel safe in their homes that as long as any felon can obtain a gun at will, it is only chance which. separates any man, woman, or child in this country from the ordeal which he and his family experienced as hostages at the hands of desperate criminals. Now, I want to make it clear for the record that the legislation we propose here cannot remove all guns from the reach of criminals. I have said this repeatedly in the course of these hearings, but the important point is they can substantially reduce this danger. I have asked Mr. Champion to appear here so that he can emphasize for the benefit of the American public the horror even a few guns can bring into the lives of innocent citizens if they are in the wrong hands. I think his testimony will show over and above the tragedies and murder figures recorded in our hearings that this deliberation on gun legislation is academic only when you are not looking into the black barrel of a pistol or rifle, that the danger of misused firearms has been a stark reality for many, and that death and injury are just around the corner for many unsuspecting citizens in this land. Mr. Champion is director of finance, appointed by Governor Brown, of California, and he is a member of 28 State boards and commissions, including the public works board, the State lands commission; he supervises the State planning office and programs policy staff in the executive department, and he has been active in efforts to enact firearms legislation in the State of California. I have not met you, Mr. Champion. We met on the telephone. I need not say to you again that I am one of millions in this country who felt for you and prayed for you and am glad that you came out all right. Go right ahead. STATEMENT OF HALE CHAMPION, DIRECTOR OF FINANCE, STATE OF CALIFORNIA Mr. CHAMPION. Thank you very much, Senator. I am glad to have this opportunity to appear before your committee and tell you personally how impressed I am by the work you have done in this field. I am not an expert witness in this field although I do have some relevant knowledge of the problems involved, largely through general governmental experience. As you pointed out, I also have recently had a special experience which has greatly increased my direct interest in Federal, State, and local gun laws. I want to make it clear at the outset, however, that my general knowledge and special experience do not so much point to specific provisions of law as to the attitudes with which the problems of controlling the sale and use of firearms, whether concealable or not, should be approached. From our legislative history on firearms regulation in California and from the fiery correspondence I have received since it was announced that I was to testify before you-and the correspondence has been fiery in character Senator DODD. I understand that. Mr. CHAMPION. I am sure you have much more of it than I. It seems to me that the greatest difficulty in dealing with firearms legislation is one of the attitudes concerned, primarily on the part of opposition to change or reform. The firearms regulation problem is not unique in this respect, nor, in fact in many other respects. A scattered rural society in which individuals could have a great deal of freedom without infringing on the rights of others or endangering the lives of others has changed with breathtaking speed into a tightly interwoven urban complex in which most of us spend a good deal of time polluting each other's air and water, using our automobiles as unintentional lethal weapons, and being generally indifferent to the consequences of other people's possession of firearms at the risk of indifference to our own lives and safety. And California is a State in which this change from rural to urban has taken place with amazing rapidity, and we are still trying to catch up with the impact. A lot of people I think probably who have not visited California are under the impression that it still is a good deal of a rural society. As a matter of fact, 90 percent of the people of California are now in urban areas. Some of us do not want to recognize the changes in our society at all. For such persons the problem of the sale of a rifle to an un known hoodlum who can immediately cut it down to a concealable weapon if he chooses is no different than the problem of getting a rifle into the hands of a militiaman who stood at Lexington or Concord. With them logical discussion is impossible. Other more reasonable persons recognize the change in size, shape, and scope of the problem but not in its fundamental nature. I think this is what happened. The volume has gotten so great that the fundamental nature of the problem has changed. These people will admit the necessity of some reform, but only in degree. They continue to feel that new regulations ought not to impose any more than a minimal burden of time and inconvenience on the would-be legitimate purchaser or user of a firearm no matter how much additional regulations which would impose such burdens of time and inconvenience might help to solve the firearms control problems of society as a whole. I would urge that the attitude ought to be reversed. The legitimate purchaser and user of a lethal firearm ought to be willing to go to at least the same great lengths to protect the interests of society as the legitimate purchaser and user of another lethal weapon, the automobile. He ought to be willing to accept relatively heavy burdens so long as his basic privilege is still available. Perhaps my personal story will help explain why I think the acceptance of such burdens is wise and necessary. At about 3 a.m., Thursday, July 8th, my wife, my 19-month-old baby and I were kidnaped from our home in Sacramento. Now, we were not kidnaped because the gun laws are inadequate and I do not propose to tell you that, nor do I propose to go through the whole 24-hour story of hostage, exchanges of gunfire, and eventual release. But there were pertinent episodes, and I do want to tell you about those. Part of what happened I know myself and part of it comes from subsequent investigation and interview by others about which I was told. First, it should be noted that the two men who took us as hostages were less than 2 weeks out of Oregon State prison, that they were being sought throughout the Northwest for bank robbery, the killing of a deputy sheriff, rape, and prior kidnapings. When they took us from our home, they had either three or four weapons in their possession, all pistols of one type or another. I do not know how they were obtained, but I understood officers believe none of them was purchased. As a matter of fact, I think one of them was taken from the deputy who was killed, but that is not a matter of personal knowledge. And in this the adequacy of gun laws, as far as my knowledge at least is concerned, is not a factor. What happened later, it did become a factor. We were driven over the Sierra-I did most of the driving over the Sierra-into Nevada at gunpoint and drove up the highway the next morning as far as Carson City. This time we had been in the car about 6 hours. Carson City is the State capital of Nevada. There we waited in our car just off the main street with one of the kidnapers while the other, a 30year-old Georgian named Wilfred Marion Gray, made the first of a number of trips around the corner on to the main street to buy supplies and equipment. When he came back a few minutes later he showed us his first purchase, a .30-30 lever action Winchester and a box of shells. I was amazed at his nerve and somewhat dismayed at the apparent ease with which he had made the purchase. My dismay was doubled much later when I found out what I think were FBI agents making a check on the purchase told us. A hardware clerk confirmed making the sale and identified Gray by his picture. He said he asked for no identification or information of any kind and was given none. There was no receipt or record, and apparently because a rifle was involved rather than a concealable weapon, none was required by Nevada State law. When the clerk was informed that rules under the Federal Firearms Act or one of the acts requires records of such a transaction, the clerk admitted laxness and promised future improvement. The possession of this rifle seemed to change our captor's plans. It was about 9:30 in the morning by that time. Whereas they had been talking about leaving us in a desolate spot, stealing another car, and heading across Nevada, they now began to talk about holing up in the high Sierra, which would have meant doubling back on their tracks and in fact they did double back. But before they did so, within the next half hour they got another .30-30, this time in nearby Minden, Nev., which is just down the road from Carson City. This was a Winchester .30-30 carbine repeater, and again they got more shells. Investigators checking this out later got tentative identification of the purchaser by both a clerk and the manager as Carl Cletus Bowles, who was Gray's partner in this crime. They happened to have been wrong. It was in fact Gray himself who made the purchase because Bowles was still in the car with us at the time it was made. But since neither the clerk nor the manager had asked for identification or information or kept any records of any kind or kept any receipts, I can understand that their memories were not good and they had no way of checking back on who the real purchaser of the rifle was. It was interesting that they did remark to the investigators that they had noticed that the purchaser seemed nervous and that it was unusual that he should buy such a high-powered rifle at this time of the year, not deer season, but they made no effort to find out what it was to be used for or who the people that wanted it were. At this time there were all points bulletins all over the western part of the United States naming these two men, identifying them and asking people who saw any signs of them or us to please report it to the police immediately. I can only speculate on what would have happened had there been a requirement of adequate identification, or a compulsory delay of delivery, or a combination of both. At the very least, I would conclude, these men would have been without two high-powered rifles as they continued their flight with us. As it happened both weapons got some use that day. The first was target shooting out in the desert. They had me busy changing a tire and this did nothing but scare the baby and produce a sore eardrum for my wife. But it also produced in their conversation evidence that firing a gun was the most important act in Bowles' life, and actually evidence that he was a very good shot. Gray conceded Bowles' superiority, but he added one thing, that he was as good a shot as he had to be because he could hit a man-sized target. Both talked about their increased hitting power now that they had these two rifles, and their ability to deal better with the police with the rifles in their possession. "I think we are going to get it," Gray said to me at one point, "but now we can take a lot of fuzz with us." The rifles actually helped them get through our first roadblock unscathed and later were used during one brief exchange of gunfire in nearby Tonopah, Nev., shortly before our release. The police were holding their fire in order not to endanger us, but a bartender opened up briefly with a .38 Colt in protest against having the facade of the main Tonopah Casino punctured where he worked. The only result of that bit of vigilante action was a bullet in my leg. When the two gunmen let me out on the highway outside town, they were still convinced they were going to die, promising to die as a matter of fact, saying they were going to use their rifles to "take a lot of the cops with us." They did not, but they very well could have. It would be easy to demonstrate that much of what happened that day has really little direct relation, with the exception of the identification feature, to the legislation submitted by Senator Dodd, but there are a whole host of indirect relationships. If the Federal firearms laws are not tightened to prohibit mail-order sales without identification and strict limitations on eligibility, what good will it do to tighten State requirements or even to insist on better enforcement of the ones we already have? If the Federal Government is not to make a meaningful effort to do its part to keep arms from going to juveniles, felons, narcotic addicts, and the mentally deranged, how can the States successfully do so? The answers, it seems to me, are clear. Only if both the Federal and State Governments really work at this problem in concert can it be reduced. And, in approaching the methods, the specific provisions of both Senator Dodd's bill and our continuing legislative program in California, we must do so with the attitude that far more people are far more threatened by loose laws and lax administration than would be burdened by tight laws and strict administration. Personally, I would like to see the Dodd bill go much further to include high-powered rifles and shotguns and to make even tighter the conditions of sales. I have had substantial experience with the realities of securing passage of controversial legislation in California, however, and I recognize the problems Senator Dodd is faced with. I hope that the committee and subsequently the Congress will approve at least as much as Senator Dodd now asks. If you are interested, I have brought with me for your record a list of the changes we have just made in our State firearms laws. But I mention them here really for only two reasons. First, they indicate a growing concern about the use of firearms in a State which now has almost 10 percent of the Nation's population. And second, they show that we are awfully late in dealing with some problems which should have been dealt with long before if they had been approached with what I would believe to be the right attitude. Thank you very much. Senator DODD. Thank you, Mr. Champion. I think it would be helpful if you would leave with us the changes that you have made in your State firearms laws. |