Battle of the Guns

A local citizen strode up to Judge "Three-Legged Willie" Williamson's table, pulled out a Bowie knife and said: "Your Honor, this is the law in this country." Said the judge, pulling out his six-shooter: "This is the constitution that overrides the law."

--A Texas tale by J. Frank Dobie

In the U.S., where Daniel Boone killed his "bar" and Annie got her gun, the right of the citizenry to "bear arms" is guaranteed by the Constitution. But all rights are limited, and the 1963 death of President Kennedy at the hands of an assassin with a mail-order rifle has caused deep concern about the shocking ease with which death-dealing weaponry may be obtained by anybody.

Last week Congress had before it a bill that would make gun-toting tougher and that would cut drastically into the multimillion-dollar-a-year business of weaponry by mail. Drawn up by the Administration and introduced in the Senate by Connecticut Democrat Thomas J. Dodd, the measure would, among other things:

>Outlaw interstate sales of weapons to individuals.

> Prohibit sales by federal licensees of all weapons to anyone under 18 years of age, and of pistols and most other firearms to anyone under 21.

> Curb imports of foreign-made weapons by limiting them to antiques and those "particularly suitable for sporting purposes."

Unsettling Toll. As chairman of the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Dodd conducted hearings that disclosed some unsettling facts. In 1963, approximately 1,000,000 "dangerous weapons" were sold by mail-order firms. Of some 5,000 persons murdered with firearms that year, about 2,500 were shot with mail-order guns. In Chicago, over a three-year period, 4,000 citizens bought weapons from just two mail-order dealers; of the buyers, 1,000 had criminal records.

Last January a 15-year-old Baltimore boy killed his father, mother and sister with a foreign-made .38 that he had purchased from the same dealer in California who sold Lee Harvey Oswald the telescopic sight for his rifle. As the youth was arrested, another gun was being sent to him by the same dealer.

Armament at Will. Compounding the problem is a ceaseless inflow of weapons from abroad. In the past two years, almost 2,500,000 pistols and rifles were imported into the U.S. from England, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. In addition, war-surplus heavy weaponry, such as bazookas and antitank guns, is permitted to come into the U.S. from abroad, and may be purchased in many places at will.

As a result, four California youths set fire to an acre of the Angeles National Forest with a blast from a German-made, 20-mm. antitank gun that they had bought from a Culver City firm for $150. And last September, the FBI seized four Russian-army Tokarev semi-automatic rifles that had been shipped to members of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi.

Subsidized Sharpshooting. To Dodd, such examples illustrate "the tragedy and imbecility of our failure as a society to civilize the use of firearms." Ironically, the Federal Government shares responsibility for the proliferation of weaponry. Through the "National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice," an arm of the Department of Defense, M-1 rifles, which cost $60 to $70 at Army-surplus stores, are sold to civilians of the 500,000-member National Rifle Association for $20 to $30. Members of N.R.A. clubs get ammunition for such weapons for free. All told, Dodd's subcommittee estimates the weapons subsidy has amounted to possibly $16 million over the past ten years.

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