We respectfully request you to wait for the States to ask you for assistance before you ram it down their throats. This point is particularly important in view of the preemptive feature of the bill, Section 927, which removes any right of the States to have more lenient regulations.

We pass now to the lengthy "Declaration and Findings". These would place the Congress on record as stating that the present availability of firearms is a causative factor in crime. There is no statistically valid evidence to support that position. True, there have been cases of misuse and these have been publicized well enough to have strong emotional impact on all of us. But when one compares crime rates in the seven states having the tightest restrictions with the rates for their more permissive regional neighbors, one does not find the more restrictive states enjoying lower rates. (We have included the figures on murder, robbery, and aggravated assault for the year 1965 as Appendix A). Now the proponent of measures such as H.R. 5384 will argue that the relatively tight state restrictiions would be effective if only the bill were passed. But surely there should be at least some slight effect visible now, even without the Federal measure. There is none. None whatsoever, when comparison is on a valid, within the region, basis. The reason for the lack of benefit is possibly that the criminal feels greater assurance that his intended victim will be unarmed and helpless when he knows that honest citizens experience red tape, police pressure, delays and legal expenses in procuring firearms. But regardless of the reason, the results speak for themselves-the states with the tightest controls do not experience lower crime rates than their more permissive neighbors. Crime is something that lies in the hearts of men and it breeds in the social conditions under which men live. It is not committed by, or caused by, or apparently, even materially aided by, firearms any more than by automobiles, whiskey, knives or baseball bats.

Examining the provisions of the bill itself, the flat prohibition against ordering by mail does great harm to the little man. The mail order market is a great leveler of prices and a great catalog of availabiilty. The local dealer is forced to keep his prices down, and his stock of merchandise up by the possibility of being undercut by mail. This factor is tremendously important to the beginning shooter who happens to have limited financial means. His first deer rifle is likely to be a $25 surplus Mauser. Only later, when he learns how much he enjoys his sport does he graduate to the $250 Winchester. Dealers are people and are subject to all of the foibles of people. If left to their own devices they will, too often, stock only the merchandise on which they make the larger mark up; particularly in regions when they are the only dealers in town. This will not seriously affect the rich and the powerful but it will hurt little man, and he is the very one our laws should protest.

Another little man would be hurt by the blanket prohibition against ordering by mail. He is the craftsman who in a small shop turns out a few specialized, precise, high quality, firearms. Because his product is expensive only a few of us can afford to buy it and, as a consequence, the craftsman cannot afford the network of distributors and dealers which the great gun manufacturers of Connecticut can. When one says "mail order gun", the proponent of tighter controls would have you think only of a certain 6.5 mm Carcano. We plead with you to think also of hundreds of craftsmen. Please don't wipe them out.

The prohibition against the sale of pistols to non residents of the dealer's state would seem to work unnecessary hardship against those of us who travel extensively. One occasionally finds an attractive buy in an out-of-state gun store or gun show. Most of us are completely innocent purchasers with no intent to circumvent the laws of our home state. Why build into Federal law what amounts to a "presumption of guilt” against us?

Then there are the places in the bill where matters depend on the judgment of the Secretary or his delegate. We have had experience with the delicate gun law judgments of appointed officials and we are very sensitive on this point. It sems to us that no matter how capable, conscientious, or intelligent the official may be in all other respects, if there is any way he can malenforce a gun law he will malenforce it. If, for instance, the Secretary may issue a dealers license, or may authorize the importation of a firearm with certain conditions being fulfilled, there is also the possibility that he chooses not to. True, the rich and the powerful have recourse to the courts when their rights are arbitrarily denied

but does the Congress want to live in a country where only the rich and the powerful can secure their rights? We think not.

When we read that as capable a man as The Attorney General has stated that "Every year 17,000 people dies by means of firearms" we have reason to look for difficulty in enforcement and we are not in the least reassured by the statement that this bill is not intended to harm honest sportsmen. Mr. Clark failed to mention that his figure included suicides and accidents and that of even the murders, only about 16% were committed during the course of a crime. Thus, if the bill is truly to be enforced so as to not harm innocent purchasers, there are only about 900 deaths which it stands any chance at all of reaching. The prospects of preventing any significant number of these 900 are dim indeed. There is the very real spectre of the type of enforcement which we fear. Among publicized cases, there was the one in New York where the target shooter was denied permission to purchase a pistol because his father had been a bookmaker. There was the New Jersey case where the local police chief wanted all prospective purchasers of rifles to take a psychiatric examination. Both of these were taken to court and the sportsmen won out, which is how the cases came to public notice. But how many cases of abuse by petty officials never make the newspapers because the victim could not afford to go to court? A few were documented in an excellent little study made by the Illinois State Association a few years ago and submitted to the 89th Congress. For your convenience, I have taken the liberty of including it as Appendix B.

In summary, there seems to be little or no real need for the passage of H.R. 5384 and considerable risk to the rights of honest, decent, responsible citizens if it does pass. If the states which do choose to have tighter restriction want Federal backup, they can obtain it by supporting the passage of H.R. 2839 by Mr. Sikes instead. The latter bill would prohibit shipping firearms into any state in contravention of the laws of that state. It would accomplish any legitimate purpose which H.R. 5384 might have. It has been endorsed by The Nattional Rifle Association and opposed by none but the zealots who want precisely the type of control which invites abuse.

APPENDIX A

CRIME RATES AND GUN LAWS

All of us are, quite properly, concerned about the rising crime rate. These days it is fashionable to claim that tighter controls over firearms might alleviate the problem. Proponents of tighter controls argue that guns are used in a significant fraction of the murders, robberies, and aggravated assaults. Therefore, making guns more difficult to obtain might reduce the frequency of these violent offenses.

It would be a reasonable enough proposition except for one fact. It has been tried and it doesn't work.

Seven of our states have relatively tough pistol laws. In these seven (Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Michigan, Missouri, and Hawaii) the acquisition of handguns is made difficult by the requirement for a purchase-permit, issued (or refused) by the police. Typically, the applicant goes to the police station, is fingerprinted, and furnishes photographs, personal data and character references. The police investigate the applicant and have ample opportunity to determine if he has a criminal record or is otherwise of bad character. Surely the process should, if anything in the way of gun controls would, show some benefit to society in lowering crime rates. Does it?

It doesn't do any good to look at isolated cases. For every case cited where a robber bought his gun on the way to the bank another can be cited where a storekeeper foiled a robbery, or a houseowner a burglary, by having a gun and knowing how to use it. Valid conclusions can only be reached if we look at large numbers of cases. Unfortunately, this drives us into the matter of statistics. But it isn't really so bad. No elaborate mathematical processes are needed and interpretation is really quite easy.

The FBI's annual "Crime in the United States-Uniform Crime Reports" is an authoritative source of data. The 1965 edition, the latest available, is used here. Because many of the factors affecting crime rates are geographical in character, the FBI groups the states into nine geographical regions. Regions containing one or more of the purchase-permit states, regional averages, and permit state rates are listed below. In all cases rates are occurrences per 100,000 population.

NEW ENGLAND REGION

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode

Island, Vermont:

Regional rate...

Massachusetts (purchase-permit).

Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota,

South Dakota:

Regional rate.

Missouri (purchase permit).

SOUTH ATLANTIC

Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia:

The remaining three regions in the FBI's grouping do not contain any states with statewide purchase-permit or tougher laws, hence are not included in the comparison.

Examination of the above figures shows that in four out of the six regions, the state with the toughest pistol law also has the highest murder rate. In four out of the six it has the highest robbery rate and in five out of six it has the highest rate for aggravated assault. It should be readily apparent that when regional groupings are used, so as to reduce the effect of geographical and sociological factors, there is no reduction in the risk of being the victim of a violent crime because one happens to live in a state with a restrictive gun law.

In all three crimes, the rates for Hawaii run below those of the "region" within which it is included. This is undoubtedly because neither Hawaii nor Alaska properly belong in any regional group and were only included for the sake of completeness.

The reader is cautioned not to infer that the above figures prove any increase in violent crime rates because of the law. But they do show that, when comparisons are made with neighboring and more permissive states, the presence of a statewide purchase permit law does not make the citizen one bit safer!

We admit that some (but by no means all) conscientious and competent law enforcement officers sincerely believe that permit-to-purchase laws should be enacted. But we submit that they cannot give even a weak proof to back up their belief. And there are strong counter opinions. The thug manages to get a gun even under the toughest laws. But the honest citizen often cannot. The thug has what amounts to an assurance that his intended victim will be unarmed and helpless. If we were only talking about an inconvenience to the honest citizen, maybe proof would not be necessary. But when we are talking about taking away a civil right, we should require proof that a valid social need is served. And we are talking about a right. In 43 of the 50 states, a citizen who is not under age, and who is not a convicted criminal, or of unsound mind has the right to buy a handgun, whether he wants it for target shooting or for defense of his home or store. He may be willing to give up that right, to see it converted to a privilege to be granted or withheld, if and only if he can be shown that society as a whole would be better off. We do not think that the proponents have proven their case.

A STUDY OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF CHICAGO'S PISTOL PURCHASE PERMIT LAW

Prepared by the Illinois State Rifle Association, Inc.

As a Public Service 1965

The Great Controversy Over Firearms Legislation

Every session of the Illinois legislature bears witness to the introduction of one or more Bills designed to provide stricter, more restrictive controls over the pur chase, possession and use of firearms by private citizens. Such Bills are osten sibly intended to reduce the accessibility of firearms to those classes of persons who are by reason of either criminal or psychotic propensities generally re garded as unfit to possess firearms. The rationale accompanying such legislative proposals customarily resembles the following

[1] Everyone agrees that it is desirable to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of convicted criminals, fugitives from justice, persons under indictment. drug addicts, mental incompetents and minors.

[2] Persons wishing to purchase a firearm should first be thoroughly investi gated and cleared by the police from their area of residence before being allowed to complete their purchase.

[3] Law-abiding citizens should certainly have no objections to the relatively minor inconveniences attendant to a police investigation, considering the resulting social value in keeping firearms out of the possession of undesir ables.

The persuasiveness of the former propositions have been continually assailed by many persons who contend that while logically reasonable they do not correspond with the hard facts of reality.

Recognizing that academic exchanges of opinion are of little practical utility in evaluating or accurately predicting the actual effect of various types of proposed firearms legislation in Illinois, and in the interests of providing once and for all time, a definitive answer to this highly controversial issue. the Illinois State Rifle Association conducted a careful and detailed study of the patterns and techniques employed in the administration of Chicago's pis tol purchase permit law. The results of that study appear below and, more clearly than all the pious pronouncements to the contrary, establish the nature of that administration.

Introduction and Background

As of the time this report is written, there exists NO state law in Illinois which requires prior police permission in order for a law-abiding citizen of good repute to purchase a pistol or revolver. Under the Illinois law, any per

son who is not a minor, a narcotics addict, or an ex-felon within a five year period of release from the penitentiary, is entitled to buy a handgun within Illinois without police intervention of any kind. . . that is, unless he happens to be a resident of Chicago and wishes to purchase the pistol within the corporate limits of the city. In this latter case, the City of Chicago's pistol purchase permit ordinance takes priority.

The Chicago Pistol Purchase Permit Ordinance

RESTRICTIONS ON SALE OR GIFT

183-6. It shall be unlawful for any person to sell, barter, or give away to any person within the city, any deadly weapon mentioned in section 183-1, except to licensed dealers and to persons who have secured a permit for the purchase of such articles from the commissioner of police as hereinafter required. This section shall not apply to sales made of such articles which are to be delivered or furnished outside the city.

PERMIT TO PURCHASE WEAPON

183-7. It shall be unlawful for any person to purchase any deadly weapon mentioned in section 183-1, which can be concealed on the person without first securing from the commissioner of police a permit to do so. Before any such permit is granted, an application in writing shall be made therefor, setting forth in such application the name, address, age, height, weight, complexion, nationality, and other elements of identification of the person desiring such permit, and the applicant shall present such evidence of good character as the comissioner of police at his discretion may require.

It shall be the duty of the commissioner of police to refuse such permit to any person having been convicted of any crime, and any minor. Otherwise, in case he shall be satisfied that the applicant is of good moral character, it shall be the duty of the commissioner of police to grant such permit upon the payment of a fee of two dollars.

How the Ordinance Operates

A resident of Chicago may, as of this time, legally purchase a pistol over the counter throughout the state of Illinois, except in Chicago, without the necessity of first securing a police pistol purchase permit.

A non-Chicago resident of Illinois may, as of this time, legally purchase a pistol in Chicago without the necessity of obtaining a permit from the Chicago police, but guns purchased under these circumstances must be shipped to the purchaser's non-Chicago address rather than being handed to him directly over the counter.

A Chicagoan, however, who desires to buy a handgun in the city of Chicago cannot legally do so without first having secured a permit from the Chicago Police Department pursuant to the above City Ordinance.

How Applications for Permits Are Obtained

Chicagoans wishing to file their application for a police pistol purchase permit are required to apply in person at the Central Police Headquarters located approximately one mile south of the city's downtown shopping district in an area that can be characterized as remote from residential areas, inconveniently located, and without adequate public parking facilities.

It should be noted that this procedure stands in glaring contrast to the policy of allowing citizens to register firearms that they might own at any of the many conveniently located District Police Stations throughout Chicago. This is in spite of the fact that firearms registration is merely permissive and not required by any city or state law, and that facilities for gun registration exist merely as a so-called "public service" for those persons desiring to avail themselves of it.