Muzzling Handguns

With his customary bluntness, Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley summed up his side of the argument: "It is the obligation of Government to prevent its citizens from being shot. It is the obligation of Government, therefore, to eliminate the handgun, as much as possible, from our society."

Daley was appearing as the lead-off witness at hearings on the need for stricter federal gun controls that were being held in Chicago last week by a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. The mayor's views were hotly opposed by James Valentino Jr., president of the Illinois State Rifle Association. "The public wants anticrime laws, not antigun laws," said Valentino. "Protecting the citizens is not disarming them."

In rebuttal, Susan Sullivan, a member of the Chicago-based Committee for Handgun Control, told the Congressmen: "Seventy percent of the people want strong gun control. The people are plain outraged at the violence."

The testimony of Mrs. Sullivan and Mayor Daley obviously pleased Subcommittee Chairman John Conyers Jr., a liberal Democrat from Detroit. Conyers is convinced that effective gun control is an idea whose time is rapidly coming, if not already here. "I won't predict when," he said, "but the mood is for change. All the signs are on go."

Cheap Pistols. Behind the Judiciary Committee's drive for action on firearms is rapidly mounting evidence that the most recent federal gun-control law, passed in 1968, has been an abysmal failure. The proposal was fought so successfully by the National Rifle Association that the eventual law did little more than strengthen bookkeeping requirements for dealers and ban the importing of cheap pistols. Even that ban was undercut by permitting Americans to import the parts for easily assembled "Saturday-night specials," short-barreled, cheaply made weapons that sell for $25 or so and usually fire small-caliber bullets.

There are now an estimated 40 million handguns in the U.S., and the total is increasing by 2.5 million a year. The result has been carnage. Handguns are the weapons in more than half of the murders committed in the U.S. According to U.S. Attorney General Edward Levi, about one of every four aggravated assaults and one of every three robberies involves a pistol.

State and local laws have been as ineffective as the federal statutes. According to Levi, only two states--New York and Massachusetts--have "tough" gun-control statutes. The first case under Massachusetts' new law, which went into effect on April 1, was decided last week when Calvin Hebert, 18, was found guilty of carrying a rifle without a permit. If Hebert's appeal is turned down, he would be subject to the one-year mandatory jail sentence the new law imposes on all offenders, even transients with guns registered in states other than Massachusetts.

In the U.S. Congress, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino is enthusiastically committed to reporting out a strong control bill, perhaps this summer or fall. Senator Edward Kennedy last week introduced a bill that would require the registration of all handguns, the licensing of all handgun owners, and an outright ban on Saturday-night specials. But any such bill in the Senate must get by Senator James Eastland, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Eastland comes from Mississippi, where possession of a firearm is looked upon as a natural right.

With pressure building up for some kind of change, the N.R.A. is quietly indicating that it might ease its opposition to curbs on ownership of some handguns. Fearing that the N.R.A. is turning soft, freedom-of-the-gun hardliners have formed the National Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The committee argues that law-abiding Americans need guns to protect themselves against armed criminals. A startling bumper sticker displayed by some like-minded citizens: "I will give up my gun when they peel my cold dead fingers from around it."

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