Danger at Home

Laws to register and license firearms seemed within reach during the days of shock that followed Robert Kennedy's assassination. That prospect is now dimming with each passing day.

Spurred by lobbyists of the National Rifle Association, foes of gun controls reversed the earlier avalanche of congressional mail in favor of stricter gun laws. In the Senate Judiciary Committee, a coalition of conservative Midwesterners and Southerners, ramrodded by South Carolina's Republican Strom Thurmond, riddled Joseph Tydings' gun-control bill with escape-clause amendments, leaving little hope for enactment of a meaningful law by a Senate racing to adjourn by Aug. 3. In the House, Veteran Emanuel Celler, a doughty proponent of stiff gun laws, concluded sadly that he lacked votes to overcome a House Rules Committee roadblock. Though Celler won support for a measure banning interstate mailorder sales of rifles, shotguns and ammunition, he had to compromise by promising to remain silent on gun registration and licensing.

While politicians wrangled over firearms, other Americans continued to settle their private arguments with guns and other lethal instruments:

> In New York City, slum dwellers were sent skidding for cover when Bobby Rogers, 31, Negro superintendent of a grubby South Bronx tenement, sprayed the street with bullets from a sawed-off .30-cal. semiautomatic carbine, killing three men and wounding a fourth. Rogers surrendered next day to a deputy sheriff in Graham, N.C.

> In Sacramento, two youths dropped Molotov cocktail fire bombs outside Governor Ronald Reagan's home when a bodyguard opened fire. Police said the incident was the probable aftermath to a racial disturbance near by. -- In Long Island's suburban Nassau County, police acted on a telephone tip and removed a fragmentation hand grenade set to explode at the turn of a heater switch in a car belonging to County Executive Eugene Nickerson.

> In the air, en route to Houston, one of the most adamant congressional opponents of gun controls came under the gun himself. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman James Eastland of Mississippi was confronted by an armed hijacker on his way to the men's room. "I'm a dying man," Eastland was told. "I don't mind killing you. You better get back to your seat." Reported Eastland later: "I went right back and sat down." The gunman ordered Pilot Forrest Dines to fly to Cuba, but later tossed his .45 automatic on the cabin floor and surrendered. In an orotund senatorial non sequitur, Eastland said afterward that he saw no reason for changing his mind about guns. "It's all the Supreme Court's affair," he declared. "They make it possible for criminals to run wild."

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