Again, Gallery Gunning

One day last week the Senate Rules Committee dismissed as an "unfortunate incident" the invasion of the Senate Press Gallery by a veteran Senate employe who was hunting a critical newshawk with a loaded revolver. Sixty-six minutes later a pale, pinched young man stood up in the

House gallery, slung one leg over the railing, brandished a .38 calibre revolver and shouted at the top of his lungs: "I demand 20 minutes to address the House. Whoever tries to stop me will die. Is that understood? I want to be heard." Twenty feet below on the floor the House was taking a teller vote on a minor appropriation amendment. At the gallery gunner's outcry the hundred members present were seized with honest panic. Most of them sprinted for the safety of the cloakrooms. Others ducked under tables. A few sat petrified in their seats. One Representative who did not lose his head was Minnesota's "lame duck" Melvin Joseph Maas, an overseas aviator with the Marine Corps during the War. Stocky & brave, Representative Maas marched across the floor to a spot directly under the armed intruder and called up: "All right, son, you can have the floor and make your speech. But you can't do it with that gun in your hand. Come on, drop it down to me." The youth stared down dully. "Throw me your gun, that's a good fellow," coaxed Representative Maas. The revolver, loaded and cocked, plunked down into the Minnesotan's open hand. Simultaneously New York's stocky little La Guardia, also a wartime aviator, who had dashed directly to the gallery, helped capture the young man from behind. Representatives sneaked sheepishly back to the floor from the cloakrooms. The teller vote was resumed. The Congressional Record made no mention of the interruption. The youth told police he was Marlin Kemmerer, 25, of Allentown, Pa. where he works in the sporting goods department of a Sears, Roebuck store. His friends described him as an expert marksman. Before hospitalizing him for mental observation, police found two sticks of dynamite in his rooming house, a ten-page speech in his pocket. Said he: "You need a gun these days to get the right to make a speech."

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