THE RISE OF GUN CONTROL IN AMERICA
" History repeats itself", remarked Clarence Darrow "That's one of the things wrong with
it!"
The year was 1966. For six days in May, there were massive Veitnam War protests,
sometimes violent, on college campuses. On June 7th, civil rights leader James
Meredeth was shot and wounded leading a march for voter registration. In July and
August, city after city suffered race riots as the contagion of rioting that appeared in the
1965 Watts riot in Los Angeles spread Nationwide. "Black power" leaders such as
Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers terrified mainstream America with
high-powered rhetoric about violent revolution as they encouraged African Americans to
arm themselves against 'whitey"
And on August 1st, 1966, agricultural student and former marine Charles Whitman
climbed a tower at the University of Texas in Austin. Using a high-powered hunting rifle he
murdered15 people and wounded 31 more before being killed by the police, with the
courageous assistance of an armed citizen. An autopsy revealed that Whittman had been
suffering from undiagnosed brain cancer.
The nation seemed to be falling apart and Washington, D.C., was looking for a solution.
Though there was no formal anti-gun lobby, the talk was of gun control with Senator
Thomas Dodd (D-CT), father of current Senator Chris Dodd, leading the charge. Working
with Dodd was Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), serving his first Senator term. In
October, the Senate Judiciary Committee convened gun control hearings.
Senator Kennedy called for a ban on mail order sales of rifles made to military
specifications. Gun control advocates were particularly disturbed by the sale of
low-priced foreign rifles, since European governments had been shipping their outdated
World War II rifles to the thriving U.S. firearms market.
When Senator Kennedy called giving the Secretary of the Treasury discretion to ban the
import of guns not "recognized as particularly suitable" for sporting purposes, Senator
Roman Hruska (R-Nebraska) railed against "the unlikely assumption without evidence
that substantial markets for imported products are composed of irresponsible or criminal
citizens". Hruska said that there was "no justifiable criteria" to discriminate among
various categories of imported firearms; he warned that giving the Treasury Department
broad discretion would subject gun owners to the vicissitudes of "domestic politics".
The cast of characters who appeared before Congress included President Johnson's
attorney general Nicholas B. Katzenbach,, the attorney general of New Jersey, the chiefs
of police in St. Louis, and Atlanta, the New York City police bureaucracy, the American
Bar Association, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Senator Kennedy promised that adoption gun control plan would lead to the problem of
juveniles acquiring guns being "substantially alleviated"
No gun controls were enacted in 1966 and the next year the chaos increased. There were
more than 100 riots in the summer of 1967 with the worst taking place in Detroit and
Newark, resulting in 72 deaths. Following the Newark riots, the National Guard conducted
house-to-house searches for guns in black neighborhoods.
However, Senator Dodd had less time to spend on gun control in the summer of 1967 as
he unsuccessfully fought the Senates move to censure him (by a vote of 92 to 5) for using
tax-exempt campaign funds for personal purposes.
Long before the "long hot summer" of 1968 began, the riots did. Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr.., was assassinated with a rifle on April 4th, and for three days riots raged in over 100
cities. Riots 1964 to 1968 were unprecedented in American history. Never before 1966
had there been so many, and never before 1968 had so many erupted all at once. The
impact the impact was magnified by television, which brought the riots into every
Americans living room. Gun sales zoomed as people prepared to protect themselves in
the event of civil disorder.
Two months latter, a man named Sirhan Sirhan used a small caliber handgun to murder
presidential candidate and New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Sirhan was angry with
Kennedy's support for Israel. Kennedy had just the California Democratic primary.
Though Vice President Humphrey (who had not entered a single primary) had an
insurmountable lead in delegates for the party's nomination, Kennedy's supporters did
not realize this. What they realized was that starting in 1963 with the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy, one after of their heroes had been killed by gunfire.
To many, the national mood was well expressed by William Butler Yeats'1921 poem,
"The Second Coming":
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, whole the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
And what rough beast, it's hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Senator Kennedy's assassination galvanized gun prohibition activists more intensely than
any event since immediately after Robert Kennedy's assassination, the Emergency
Committee for Gun Control was formed with former astronaut and future Senator John
Glenn as chairman. Member included the AFL-CIO, the National Council of Churches,
New York Mayor John Lindsay, Johnny Carson, Mississippi newspaper editor (and future
White House staffer) Hodding, Carter III, Joe DiMaggio, Ann Landers, Green Bay
Packers coach Vince Lombardi and Frank Sinatra.
The Committee demanded national gun registration and licensing, a ban on interstate
gun sales, and a ban on long gun mail order sales. (Mail order handgun sales have been
banned since the prohibition era of the 1920s.) Other gun control advocates urged a ban
on all small, inexpensive handguns, so-called "Saturday Night Specials". (The term is a
racist combination of "Suicide Special" with "[racial epithet]-town Saturday Night".)
On June 24th, President Johnson addressed the nation and called for national gun
registration. "In other countries which have sensible laws, the hunter and the sportsman
thrive," he said, urging hunters and target shooters not to oppose the new restrictions.
On June 16th 1968, several American long gun manufactures, desperate to stave off gun
prohibition, announced their own gun control plan. A joint statement from a handful of
then-prominent gun companies called for a national ban on mail order gun sales. They
also suggested that states wanting additional controls enact gun licensing similar to the
Illinois system of 1966 that is still in effect today. In latter testimony before the U.S.
Senate, they urged that any state that did adopt their Model Firearms Owner's License
Bill be forced to do so by Congress.
The NRA, however, continued to oppose any new federal gun controls, and said that if
gun owner licensing were to be done at all, it should be done by the states.
On August 20th, Second Amendment defenders received a stark reminder of the
dangers of disarmament. The Soveit Union invaded Czechoslovakia, crushing the
"Prague Spring" of liberalization that had been progressing under Czech President
Alexander Dubcek. Czech students protested and rioted, but efforts were futile against
Warsaw Pact soldiers.
Riots broke out in Chicago the next week, where the Democratic convention assembled
to nominate Hubert Humphrey. Plans for peaceful protests against the Veitnam War were
hijacked by successful efforts of Yippies and the "Chicago Seven" to promote a riot. The
Chicago police, under the command of Mayor Richard Daley, responded with what a
federal commission later called "a police riot," breaking heads and engaging in
indiscriminate violence against rioters, innocent bystanders and even the media.
Back in Washington, negotiations continued on gun control. Senator Dodd and others
backers of President Johnsons plan compromised with the NRA, making the deal that
allowed the passage of the Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968. There would be no federal
licensing of gun owners. Gun sales would be registered, but only by the dealer, not the
government. (The registration is done via the yellow 4473 form that you fill out in gun
stores) Mail order and interstate gun and ammunition sales were outlawed, though states
could enact laws allowing their citizens to buy long guns in adjacent states. In addition, the
Secretary of the Treasury was given Authority to ban the import of ant gun not "particularly
suitable for, or readily adaptable to" sporting purposes. This was pleasing to American
gun makers, who had lost sales to low-priced foreign imports.
President Johnson picked up conservative votes for the GCA by agreeing to legislation
authorizing federal wiretapping, which he had previously opposed. As part of the
compromise, NRA agreed that while it could not support the GCA, it would not score a
vote for the act as an anti-gun vote. President Johnson signed the GCA into law on
October 22nd.
As the 1960s ended, many gun control advocates were disappointed in the fact that
Congress had not done more, but they but they were cheered by their progress at the
state level. Illinois and New Jersey now had tough gun owner licensing laws; New York
City had registration for rifles and shotguns instead of just for handguns. (The registration
lists would be used in the 1990s to confiscate certain long guns.) Even California
Governor Ronald Reagan had signed legislation to forbid, in most cases, the
unconcealed carrying of firearms to crack down on the Black Panthers.
Though the NRA had not opposed the GCA, many Congressmen voted "no" in deference
to their constituents. In Maryland, Democratic Senator Millard Tydings made a campaign
issue out his strong support for gun control and wiretapping. He lost his 1970 campaign
for re-election, thereby frightening many in Congress away from gun control for a number
of years.
Although some Congressman shied away from gun control, the gun ban forces began
another major push in the 1970s. Three decades after the enactment of the 1968 Gun
Control Act, which included adoption of Senator Kennedy's proposals and much more,
the anti-gun agenda sits center stage with it's Congressional proponents more energized
than ever. Whether the gun prohibition agenda from the 1960s finally triumphs in the early
21st Century will depend mainly on how hard pro-Constitution citizens work to defend
their rights.
Copied from the American Guardian
January 2000 issue.
" A Well Armed Society Is A Polite Society "
Onebgg
