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Oswald - did he work for Dodd ?
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Marcus Hanson
May 9, 2013, 3:41:40 PM5/9/13
to
I posted this a few days ago over at Duncan MacRae's forum. One of the
regulars said he had written about the matter but,so far,he has not
offered anything new.There's a few posts here,from years ago,but nothing
definitive. I'm particularly interested to know if this rumour was ever
'put to bed' officially.
Note please that this is =not= specifically about whether Oswald
did/did not buy/take possession of the weapons,nor about whether the FBI
did/did not interfere with Klein's/Seaport's records.Primarily , it is
about whether or not the rumour of Oswald working for Dodd was ever fully
investigated.
===============================================================================
The late George Michael Evica developed a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald
worked for the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.In typical
political nomenclature,this body was commonly called after its chairman
and known as The Dodd Committee.
Here is an essay on the subject : http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/the_critics/evica/We_still_all_mortal_Evica.html
And here is a piece by Dale Myers , which casts grave doubt on Oswald's
involvement with Dodd :
http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/oswalds-mail-order-revolver-purchase.html
I believe that Oswald did own the pistol , and the rifle . And that he
used them to murder two people .
Regardless of my opinion , there are still a few questions remaining.
There seems to be a paucity of information about Dodd's work .
So :
1)Did the committee's terms of reference allow them to employ/use people
who were not juveniles ? If not , then that would seem to exclude Oswald
from such a role : at twenty-three , he was hardly a "juvenile".
2)When did the committee's work finish ? I know that Dodd's work was
credited for the passing of the Gun Control Act of 1968 (thanks Wikipedia
- luv ya ! ).
But was it still active in 1963 , nine years after its formation ?
3)Have all documents been de-classified ? Are there privacy restrictions
still in force , which prevent us knowing the "who- how - when" of the
committee's work ?
4)Could Oswald have been made to believe that he was working for Dodd? I
cannot think of a better way of persuading him to bring his rifle to work.
What reward would he have received from the committee ? Cash ? "Smoothing
out" of any problems he may have encountered as a returned defector ?
The key to getting anybody to do anything is , of course , to appeal to
their self-interest. I wonder what else may , theoretically , have
appealed to Oswald's self-interest and persuaded him to work for the
committee ?
5)Would any of the people used by Dodd have ordered weapons in their own
name ? Presumably , they would - to "prove" how easily a "delinquent" could
acquire weapons.
Maybe Oswald DID work for Dodd - and decided he could kill JFK , under
protection of his relationship to the committee?
If I was attempting to exculpate Oswald , I would focus on the possibility
that he did work for Dodd. It surprises me that this has not been pushed a
bit harder by CTs.
Professor Evica said he had "unimpeachable sources" providing evidence of
Oswald's role for the Dodd Committee : but that begs the question,what did
he or his "disciple" , Charles Drago , ever do to pursue this to a
conclusion?
My antipathy for Drago does not mean that I have no interest in his
theory.
I doubt that there is any "Rosetta Stone" here , but I'd be interested to
know a bit more on the issue
regulars said he had written about the matter but,so far,he has not
offered anything new.There's a few posts here,from years ago,but nothing
definitive. I'm particularly interested to know if this rumour was ever
'put to bed' officially.
Note please that this is =not= specifically about whether Oswald
did/did not buy/take possession of the weapons,nor about whether the FBI
did/did not interfere with Klein's/Seaport's records.Primarily , it is
about whether or not the rumour of Oswald working for Dodd was ever fully
investigated.
===============================================================================
The late George Michael Evica developed a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald
worked for the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.In typical
political nomenclature,this body was commonly called after its chairman
and known as The Dodd Committee.
Here is an essay on the subject : http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/the_critics/evica/We_still_all_mortal_Evica.html
And here is a piece by Dale Myers , which casts grave doubt on Oswald's
involvement with Dodd :
http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/oswalds-mail-order-revolver-purchase.html
I believe that Oswald did own the pistol , and the rifle . And that he
used them to murder two people .
Regardless of my opinion , there are still a few questions remaining.
There seems to be a paucity of information about Dodd's work .
So :
1)Did the committee's terms of reference allow them to employ/use people
who were not juveniles ? If not , then that would seem to exclude Oswald
from such a role : at twenty-three , he was hardly a "juvenile".
2)When did the committee's work finish ? I know that Dodd's work was
credited for the passing of the Gun Control Act of 1968 (thanks Wikipedia
- luv ya ! ).
But was it still active in 1963 , nine years after its formation ?
3)Have all documents been de-classified ? Are there privacy restrictions
still in force , which prevent us knowing the "who- how - when" of the
committee's work ?
4)Could Oswald have been made to believe that he was working for Dodd? I
cannot think of a better way of persuading him to bring his rifle to work.
What reward would he have received from the committee ? Cash ? "Smoothing
out" of any problems he may have encountered as a returned defector ?
The key to getting anybody to do anything is , of course , to appeal to
their self-interest. I wonder what else may , theoretically , have
appealed to Oswald's self-interest and persuaded him to work for the
committee ?
5)Would any of the people used by Dodd have ordered weapons in their own
name ? Presumably , they would - to "prove" how easily a "delinquent" could
acquire weapons.
Maybe Oswald DID work for Dodd - and decided he could kill JFK , under
protection of his relationship to the committee?
If I was attempting to exculpate Oswald , I would focus on the possibility
that he did work for Dodd. It surprises me that this has not been pushed a
bit harder by CTs.
Professor Evica said he had "unimpeachable sources" providing evidence of
Oswald's role for the Dodd Committee : but that begs the question,what did
he or his "disciple" , Charles Drago , ever do to pursue this to a
conclusion?
My antipathy for Drago does not mean that I have no interest in his
theory.
I doubt that there is any "Rosetta Stone" here , but I'd be interested to
know a bit more on the issue
Anthony Marsh
May 9, 2013, 5:33:31 PM5/9/13
to
was part of a test/sting to see if companies were complying with the
existing gun regulations so they would know which weak spots to fix.
> 2)When did the committee's work finish ? I know that Dodd's work was
> credited for the passing of the Gun Control Act of 1968 (thanks Wikipedia
> - luv ya ! ).
>
> But was it still active in 1963 , nine years after its formation ?
>
> 3)Have all documents been de-classified ? Are there privacy restrictions
> still in force , which prevent us knowing the "who- how - when" of the
> committee's work ?
>
You used to have to wait 5 years to refile a request.
> 4)Could Oswald have been made to believe that he was working for Dodd? I
> cannot think of a better way of persuading him to bring his rifle to work.
>
> What reward would he have received from the committee ? Cash ? "Smoothing
> out" of any problems he may have encountered as a returned defector ?
>
> The key to getting anybody to do anything is , of course , to appeal to
> their self-interest. I wonder what else may , theoretically , have
> appealed to Oswald's self-interest and persuaded him to work for the
> committee ?
>
> 5)Would any of the people used by Dodd have ordered weapons in their own
> name ? Presumably , they would - to "prove" how easily a "delinquent" could
> acquire weapons.
>
> Maybe Oswald DID work for Dodd - and decided he could kill JFK , under
> protection of his relationship to the committee?
>
> If I was attempting to exculpate Oswald , I would focus on the possibility
> that he did work for Dodd. It surprises me that this has not been pushed a
> bit harder by CTs.
>
Canuck
May 9, 2013, 11:00:40 PM5/9/13
to
early 1963 requiring that a form be filled out by a purchaser of a weapon
through the mail, with a one dollar fee being charged. I was able to
obtain an article on this new requirement which appeared in a national
magazine such as LIFE or SAT. EVE. POST (which I no longer have). -
prwhitmey
Anthony Marsh
May 10, 2013, 9:41:05 AM5/10/13
to
Ace Kefford
May 10, 2013, 9:44:54 AM5/10/13
to
Marcus Hanson
May 10, 2013, 9:05:22 PM5/10/13
to
On Friday, May 10, 2013 11:44:54 PM UTC+10, Ace Kefford wrote:
> As the old saying goes, "I don't give a damn. I never worked for him. And he never worked for me."
I doubt that he did work for Dodd. Opinions-CT,LN,undecided,whatever-are
> As the old saying goes, "I don't give a damn. I never worked for him. And he never worked for me."
not the real issue: which is,whether or not this was =properly
investigated=.
Hank Sienzant (AKA Joe Zircon)
May 22, 2013, 5:25:30 PM5/22/13
to
with be investigated? You do realize the amount of theories that can
be advanced to explain some aspect of the assassination is practically
limitless?
How much money do you want the government spending on this, anyway?
What evidence did Evica ever provide to suggest Oswald had such a link
to the Dodd subcommittee? So why does this theory deserve
investigating, in the absence of any evidence it's true?
It's just a theory. Nothing else. He merely advances the theory to
explain away Oswald's purchase of the rifle. Another ABO (Anyone But
Oswald) theorist.
We got plenty of those right here.
Hank
jbarge
May 22, 2013, 10:39:58 PM5/22/13
to
Why should every silly theory that every silly conspiracist comes up with
be investigated? You do realize the amount of theories that can be
advanced to explain some aspect of the assassination is practically
limitless?
How much money do you want the government spending on this, anyway?
federal government - they usually find themselves innocent. Asking the FBI
and the CIA to exculpate themselves of any operative handling of Oswald is
one of the root causes of conspiracy theorizing. Regardless of the truth
of the matter.
What evidence did Evica ever provide to suggest Oswald had such a link to
the Dodd subcommittee? So why does this theory deserve investigating, in
the absence of any evidence it's true?
employees (wink, wink - like they would include LHO if by a long shot he
was), and then verifying identities the cost wouldn't have been that much
in the 1978 HSCA investigation. Perhaps while the FBI was providing Jack
Ruby's mother's dental records while downplaying his association with
narcotics trafficking they might've done something in 1963.
Close what you say below, but it appears more likely the theory is an
attempt to provide logic for Oswald's using a fake name while sending the
rifle to a PO Box that he rented. Since that's a really stupid way to hide
your identity, then.....ah, he was hired to prove how easy it is to order
rifles through the mail!
Long shot.
Hank Sienzant (AKA Joe Zircon)
May 23, 2013, 9:27:25 PM5/23/13
to
Your post is confusing because you don't quote me but just interject
your view right in the middle of my post.
I've taken the liberty of deleting my points and only quoting your
additions.
On May 22, 10:39 pm, jbarge <anjba...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Beyond asking the Dodd committee to provide a complete list of contract
> employees (wink, wink - like they would include LHO if by a long shot he
> was), and then verifying identities the cost wouldn't have been that much
> in the 1978 HSCA investigation.
You're saying the investigation wouldn't be fruitful because they
wouldn't own up to it.
If that's what you really believe, why are you asking if this was
properly investigated?
PS: The HSCA's investigation was centered around reviewing the extant
hard evidence in the light of advances in science by 1978. It wasn't
about opening up new investigative angles and interviewing people
concerning new theories.
> Perhaps while the FBI was providing Jack
> Ruby's mother's dental records while downplaying his association with
> narcotics trafficking they might've done something in 1963.
Sorry, there was no allegations of this nature (about the Dodd
committee) in 1963. What was there to investigate?
Should they have just investigated everybody and everything?
Should they have checked if Oswald was involved in the World Wrestling
Federation or the World Wildlife Federation?
Or how about the Amercian Power Boat Association?
Nobody was alleging Oswald had anything to do with those either in
1963.
They should have investigated those as well, just to be thorough?
If not, why would they have investigated Oswald's associations with
the Dodd Committee?
>
> Close what you say below, but it appears more likely the theory is an
> attempt to provide logic for Oswald's using a fake name while sending the
> rifle to a PO Box that he rented. Since that's a really stupid way to hide
> your identity, then.....ah, he was hired to prove how easy it is to order
> rifles through the mail!
I know what iEvica imagines it was an attempt to do.
What I'm saying is there never was any evidence for it.
Not when the WC was investigating, not when the HSCA was
investigating, not when Evica imagined the theory, and not today.
>
> Long shot.
Absolutely. And without evidence, it is a perfect swing and a miss.
A strike out.
Question for you: If Oswald ordered the rifle on behalf of the Dodd
Committee, why did he deny owning a rifle, or ordering one, when he
was in custody after the assassination? Why did he deny it was him in
the backyard photos? Why did he deny bringing any long package to work
that day?
If he was innocent, wouldn't he have said, "Yeah, that's my rifle, but
let me explain how I came to order that...."
But he didn't. Why not?
Because the whole Dodd Committee thing only exists in Evica's
imagination.
Hank
your view right in the middle of my post.
I've taken the liberty of deleting my points and only quoting your
additions.
On May 22, 10:39 pm, jbarge <anjba...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Beyond asking the Dodd committee to provide a complete list of contract
> employees (wink, wink - like they would include LHO if by a long shot he
> was), and then verifying identities the cost wouldn't have been that much
> in the 1978 HSCA investigation.
wouldn't own up to it.
If that's what you really believe, why are you asking if this was
properly investigated?
PS: The HSCA's investigation was centered around reviewing the extant
hard evidence in the light of advances in science by 1978. It wasn't
about opening up new investigative angles and interviewing people
concerning new theories.
> Perhaps while the FBI was providing Jack
> Ruby's mother's dental records while downplaying his association with
> narcotics trafficking they might've done something in 1963.
committee) in 1963. What was there to investigate?
Should they have just investigated everybody and everything?
Should they have checked if Oswald was involved in the World Wrestling
Federation or the World Wildlife Federation?
Or how about the Amercian Power Boat Association?
Nobody was alleging Oswald had anything to do with those either in
1963.
They should have investigated those as well, just to be thorough?
If not, why would they have investigated Oswald's associations with
the Dodd Committee?
>
> Close what you say below, but it appears more likely the theory is an
> attempt to provide logic for Oswald's using a fake name while sending the
> rifle to a PO Box that he rented. Since that's a really stupid way to hide
> your identity, then.....ah, he was hired to prove how easy it is to order
> rifles through the mail!
What I'm saying is there never was any evidence for it.
Not when the WC was investigating, not when the HSCA was
investigating, not when Evica imagined the theory, and not today.
>
> Long shot.
Absolutely. And without evidence, it is a perfect swing and a miss.
A strike out.
Question for you: If Oswald ordered the rifle on behalf of the Dodd
Committee, why did he deny owning a rifle, or ordering one, when he
was in custody after the assassination? Why did he deny it was him in
the backyard photos? Why did he deny bringing any long package to work
that day?
If he was innocent, wouldn't he have said, "Yeah, that's my rifle, but
let me explain how I came to order that...."
But he didn't. Why not?
Because the whole Dodd Committee thing only exists in Evica's
imagination.
Hank
Anthony Marsh
May 24, 2013, 1:21:56 PM5/24/13
to
On 5/23/2013 9:27 PM, Hank Sienzant (AKA Joe Zircon) wrote:
> Your post is confusing because you don't quote me but just interject
> your view right in the middle of my post.
>
> I've taken the liberty of deleting my points and only quoting your
> additions.
> You're trying to be confusing on purpose.
> Your post is confusing because you don't quote me but just interject
> your view right in the middle of my post.
>
> I've taken the liberty of deleting my points and only quoting your
> additions.
Who the Hell is JBarge and why are you quoting him? You are supposed to
quote my message and then reply. Learn some Netiquette.
Usenet quoting
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
When Usenet and e-mail users respond to a message, they often want to
include some context for the discussion. This is often accomplished by
quoting a portion of the original message using Usenet conventions. In
essence the convention is to communicate in plain text format (not HTML)
and quote with ">" at the beginning of each line, ">>" for a quote of
quote, and so on. Most email clients can perform Usenet quoting
automatically.
Contents
1 Examples
2 Canonical quoting
3 See also
4 HTML email and quoting
5 References
Examples
Usenet standard quoting refers to the practice of preceding the original
message with the ">" (or right-angle bracket) character at the beginning
of each line, and then inserting one's responses inline, using no
special designator for the author's messages.
> hello, how are you?
I am fine
When a second response is made to the second message, the second message
is again quoting with >, perhaps causing parts of the original message
to now be designated with >>.
>> hello, how are you?
> I am fine
Good, I am also fine.
Enhanced quoting (such as facilitating by the Emacs supercite module),
includes more context by using the initials or a short form of the name.
The program has to be careful not to quote already quoted material:
first> hello, how are you?
I am fine.
first> hello, how are you?
second> I am fine.
Good, I am also fine.
It is often the case that it makes sense, particularly in the simple
quoting case, to insert a note telling who said what:
Last Saturday, when the sun was nice, Second Guy said:
> Last thursday, while eating popcorn, First Guy said:
>> hello, how are you?
> I am fine
Good, I am also fine.
>>
>> Close what you say below, but it appears more likely the theory is an
>> attempt to provide logic for Oswald's using a fake name while sending the
>> rifle to a PO Box that he rented. Since that's a really stupid way to hide
>> your identity, then.....ah, he was hired to prove how easy it is to order
>> rifles through the mail!
>
> I know what iEvica imagines it was an attempt to do.
> What I'm saying is there never was any evidence for it.
> Not when the WC was investigating, not when the HSCA was
> investigating, not when Evica imagined the theory, and not today.
>
>
>>
>> Long shot.
>
> Absolutely. And without evidence, it is a perfect swing and a miss.
>
> A strike out.
>
> Question for you: If Oswald ordered the rifle on behalf of the Dodd
> Committee, why did he deny owning a rifle, or ordering one, when he
> was in custody after the assassination? Why did he deny it was him in
> the backyard photos? Why did he deny bringing any long package to work
> that day?
>
attack.
> If he was innocent, wouldn't he have said, "Yeah, that's my rifle, but
> let me explain how I came to order that...."
>
> But he didn't. Why not?
>
> Because the whole Dodd Committee thing only exists in Evica's
> imagination.
>
you explain the documents they generated?
http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Zimring68.htm
> Hank
>
Anthony Marsh
May 24, 2013, 1:23:14 PM5/24/13
to
On 5/23/2013 9:27 PM, Hank Sienzant (AKA Joe Zircon) wrote:
> Your post is confusing because you don't quote me but just interject
> your view right in the middle of my post.
>
> your view right in the middle of my post.
>
continued indefinitely,
>> hello, how are you?
> I am fine
Good, I am also fine.
Enhanced quoting (such as facilitating by the Emacs supercite module),
includes more context by using the initials or a short form of the name.
The program has to be careful not to quote already quoted material:
first> hello, how are you?
I am fine.
first> hello, how are you?
second> I am fine.
Good, I am also fine.
It is often the case that it makes sense, particularly in the simple
quoting case, to insert a note telling who said what:
Last Saturday, when the sun was nice, Second Guy said:
> Last thursday, while eating popcorn, First Guy said:
>> hello, how are you?
> I am fine
Good, I am also fine.
You can't be talking to me because I didn't make any allegations.
>
>>
>
>>
>> Close what you say below, but it appears more likely the theory is an
>> attempt to provide logic for Oswald's using a fake name while sending the
>> rifle to a PO Box that he rented. Since that's a really stupid way to hide
>> your identity, then.....ah, he was hired to prove how easy it is to order
>> rifles through the mail!
>
> I know what iEvica imagines it was an attempt to do.
> What I'm saying is there never was any evidence for it.
> Not when the WC was investigating, not when the HSCA was
> investigating, not when Evica imagined the theory, and not today.
>
>> attempt to provide logic for Oswald's using a fake name while sending the
>> rifle to a PO Box that he rented. Since that's a really stupid way to hide
>> your identity, then.....ah, he was hired to prove how easy it is to order
>> rifles through the mail!
>
> I know what iEvica imagines it was an attempt to do.
> What I'm saying is there never was any evidence for it.
> Not when the WC was investigating, not when the HSCA was
> investigating, not when Evica imagined the theory, and not today.
>
So what? I don't care. You are attacking just to stay in practice.
>
>>
>
>>
>> Long shot.
>
> Absolutely. And without evidence, it is a perfect swing and a miss.
>
> A strike out.
>
> Question for you: If Oswald ordered the rifle on behalf of the Dodd
> Committee, why did he deny owning a rifle, or ordering one, when he
> was in custody after the assassination? Why did he deny it was him in
> the backyard photos? Why did he deny bringing any long package to work
> that day?
>
>
> Absolutely. And without evidence, it is a perfect swing and a miss.
>
> A strike out.
>
> Question for you: If Oswald ordered the rifle on behalf of the Dodd
> Committee, why did he deny owning a rifle, or ordering one, when he
> was in custody after the assassination? Why did he deny it was him in
> the backyard photos? Why did he deny bringing any long package to work
> that day?
>
Not for me. I never made any allegation like that. You just want to attack.
> If he was innocent, wouldn't he have said, "Yeah, that's my rifle, but
> let me explain how I came to order that...."
>
> But he didn't. Why not?
>
> let me explain how I came to order that...."
>
> But he didn't. Why not?
>
I've already said 7,182 times because he shot at Walker.
> Because the whole Dodd Committee thing only exists in Evica's
> imagination.
>
> imagination.
>
So you are saying there was no Dodd Committee investigation? Then how do
you explain the documents they generated?
> Hank
you explain the documents they generated?
>
Journal of Legal Studies
4 (1975): 133.
Posted for Educational use only. The printed edition remains
canonical. For citational use please visit the local law library or
obtain a back issue.
FIREARMS AND FEDERAL LAW: THE GUN CONTROL ACT OF 1968
FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING*
In 1968, after five years of debate on firearms control, Congress
passed a Gun Control Act designed to "provide support to Federal, State,
and local law enforcement officials in their fight against crime and
violence."[1] This paper reports on an effort to study the impact of the
Gun Control Act on the problems that prompted its passage. The study is
of possible interest for two reasons.
First, it is an attempt to increase our rather modest knowledge of
the effects of governmental efforts to control firearms violence. In
recent years the rate of gun violence in the United States has managed
to grow to alarming proportions without the benefit of sustained
academic attention.[2] The 1968 Act--the only major change in federal
policy since 1938¾seems a natural place to look for clues about the
effects of gun controls. And the need for knowledge in this area seems
obvious, inasmuch as controversy is rampant and new federal legislative
proposals are almost a weekly Washington event.
Second, the study is an effort to gain some perspective on the
difficulties [Page 134] and promise of empirical studies of "legal
impact." Over the past few years, studies attempting to assess the
impact of legislation have begun to occupy an important place in
law-related scholarship.[3] Diverse both in subject matter[4] and
methodology, these studies are motivated by the hope that they will
build toward a deeper understanding of law as an instrument of social
control.[5]
The first section of this paper gives a capsule outline of the
antecedents of the Gun Control Act¾prior federal laws regulating
firearms traffic and some of the legislative proposals that affected the
shape of the 1968 law. Part II briefly analyzes the Act itself, showing
how prior federal law was altered and how the alterations were thought
to serve regulatory ends. Part III presents data on the impact of the
law, focusing on the so-called "Saturday Night Special" ban and the
effort to aid state and local gun control efforts by reducing the flow
of firearms from loose-control to tight-control states. Part IV
discusses some of the broader implications of the study.
The study will be of little use to the most fervent friends and
foes of gun control legislation. It provides data they do not need. Each
group has already decided that the 1968 Act has failed, and each group
uses the Act’s presumed failure to confirm views already strongly held.
Enthusiasts for strict federal controls see the failure of the law as
proof that stricter laws are needed,[6] while opponents see it as
evidence that no controls will work.[7] The picture that emerges from
available data is more equivocal. There is evidence that [Page 135] the
approach adopted by the Act can aid state efforts at strict firearms
control, although the resources necessary to achieve this end have never
been provided by Congress. There is also reason to believe that the
potential impact of the Act is quite limited when measured against the
problems it sought to alleviate.
I. ORIGINS AND ANTECEDENTS
While firearms have always played an important part in American
life, gun control has never been an important federal legislative topic.
State and local attempts to regulate the carrying of concealed weapons
date from the early nineteenth century,[8] with substantial legislative
activity occurring during the period from 1880 through 1915, but there
was no pressure generated to federalize the issue of firearms control
during this time.[9] In 1915 Senator Shields of Tennessee proposed a
bill to ban interstate commerce in handguns, but no bill that could
properly be called an effort at firearms control was reported out of a
congressional committee prior to the end of World War I.[10]
In 1919, a 10 per cent manufacturers’ excise tax on firearms was
imposed as part of a larger War Revenue Act,[11] and though the primary
motive of the legislation was fiscal, the legislative history of the tax
also reveals concern with handguns as a public safety problem.[12] Like
most emergency tax measures, the tax handily survived its emergency and
is still, in amended form, a part of federal firearms policy.[13] The
excise tax is also of lasting importance because the use of the taxing
power and the vesting of regulatory responsibility in the Department of
the Treasury, begun in 1919, set the pattern for later efforts at
federal firearms control.
Urban crime and handgun use received an increasing amount of public
attention during the post-World War I years,[14] and this period
produced a significant amount of state and local firearms legislation,
as well as more debate about a federal role in gun regulation. By 1924,
more than a dozen [Page 136] federal firearms control bills, most of
them regulating interstate commerce in handguns, were before Congress.[15]
In 1927 Congress enacted a law prohibiting the mailing of
concealable firearms to private individual.[16] Directed against the
undermining of state and municipal firearms control statutes through
out-of-state handgun sources this law represented the first federal
attack on "mail order murder." As an attempt to curtail interstate
movement of handguns, the 1927 prohibition (which remained in effect
until 1968) was deficient. Of all interstate carriers, only the United
States mails were closed to handgun commerce. This partial closure was
of little effect, since guns could be ordered by mail and delivered to
the purchaser by private express companies.[17] Nevertheless, the effort
was an important precedent for control of interstate firearms traffic in
two respects. The 1927 law and dissatisfaction with its effectiveness
led to proposals for tighter controls on interstate firearms sales to
private citizens that culminated in the Gun Control Act of 1968’s
near-total ban on such transactions. And by distinguishing between
dealers (who were Allowed to receive concealable firearms) and other
private citizens (who were not), the postal ban created some incentive
for private citizens to be considered dealers and thus created the need
to define the limits of the dealer category.[18] This problem was not
important in the years immediately after 1927 because there were so many
other ways for private citizens to circumvent the postal ban. But as
succeeding generations of federal legislation made the status of
"dealer" more attractive, they also made it necessary for any effective
scheme of federal regulation to define, license, and regulate firearms
dealers.[19]
It is easy to overestimate the public importance of firearms
regulation during this period. While crime and criminals were major
issues, there is little evidence that the "gun problem" and proposals to
increase the federal role in firearms regulation were visible public
issues.[20] The major public concern was crime control, and guns were
perceived as one small part of that larger issue. There is also little
to suggest that there was strong sentiment prior to the early New Deal
period to think of crime control as a national problem meriting
substantial federal regulation.
The focus of discussion during the 1920s was on uniform state laws
regulating possession and use of handguns. In 1923 a draft of a uniform
revolver [Page 137] law (prepared by the United States Revolver
Association which hoped to preempt what it considered to be
irresponsible permit schemes) was submitted to the National Conference
of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.[21] This proposal served as the
model for the Conference’s 1926 proposed Uniform Firearms Act, which
established license requirements for handgun dealers, a 48-hour waiting
period prior to handgun purchase, and the registration of handguns
purchased from dealers and supplementary penalties for handgun use in
violent crimes.[22]
In 1927 the first National Crime Commission recommended a more
stringent uniform state law as the primary national handgun policy, with
supplementary federal legislation designed to forbid the importation of
handguns and machine guns, and an extension of the ban on interstate
shipment of handguns to cover common carriers.[23]
The first serious discussion of a more extensive federal role in
firearms regulation came in the early years of the New Deal. By 1932
federal solutions to many problems were being advocated with increasing
frequency.[24] Public concern with crime and criminals had shifted from
worry about the "highwaymen" or "thugs" to the machine-gun-toting
interstate gangster personified by John Dillinger.[25] The national fear
of gangsters combined with the Roosevelt Administration’s willingness to
stretch the limits of federal jurisdiction to produce an unprecedented
package of federal anticrime initiatives, resulting in a bumper 1934
crop of laws creating, among others, the federal crimes of robbing a
federally insured bank, assault of a federal agent, and interstate
flight to avoid prosecution for certain state felonies.[26]
There were a number of reasons why a federal firearms control
proposal could be expected as part of a larger crime-control effort. The
submachine gun, then of public importance, was a natural candidate for
public fear and legislative wrath. It is also worth noting that Franklin
D. Roosevelt as Governor of New York had defended that state’s
restrictive handgun licensing statute, had campaigned for a state ban on
machine guns, and had publicly advocated federal regulation of
interstate commerce in handguns.[27] [Page 138]
But the principal booster for a federal role in firearms control
was Roosevelt’s first Attorney General, Homer Cummings. It was his
justice Department that was the moving force behind the National
Firearms Act of 1934,[28] and that attached a provision for federal
registration of all handguns to the "anti-machine gun" measure sent to
Congress in 1934.[29] When the handgun registration segment of the bill
was deleted in the House, the justice Department continued to introduce
handgun registration proposals, and to fight for them throughout the
1930s, long after crime control had lost its place in the hierarchy of
New Deal legislative goals.
The firearms control campaign of the 1930s resulted in two pieces
of federal legislation: the National Firearms Act of 1934,[30] and the
Federal Firearms Act of 1938.[31] Neither law reflected the scope of
Attorney General Cummings’ ambitions, but the two acts established a
role for the federal government in firearms control, and these laws were
the immediate precursors of the Gun Control Act of 1968.
The National Firearms Act of 1934, after the handgun registration
provisions were deleted, was a concentrated attack on civilian ownership
of machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, silencers, and other relatively
rare firearms that had acquired reputations as gangster weapons during
the years preceding its passage. Modeled on the Harrison Narcotics
Act,[32] the N.F.A. based its regulatory powers on a tax imposed on
traffic in the weapons, thus generating federal jurisdiction for
intrastate as well as interstate transactions. The tax rate, $200 per
transfer, did not seem calculated to encourage extensive commerce in
these weapon.[33] The Act also provided for the immediate registration
of all covered weapons, even if illegally owned¾a provision altered in
1968, after the United States Supreme Court held the 1934 provision to
be an infringement on the constitutional privilege against
self-incrimination.[34] [Page 139]
There are two respects in which the National Firearms Act
influenced the shape of the 1968 gun-control effort. First, the N.F.A.
put the government in the business of licensing manufacturers and
dealers of firearms, although the number of weapons and dealers affected
was relatively small. Second, the use of the taxing power again centered
enforcement responsibility in the Department of the Treasury.[35]
The N.F.A. is often cited as an instance in which federal firearms
controls succeeded in substantially achieving their purpose-in this case
the extinction of the submachine gun and other gangster weapons.[36] On
this issue the historical record is not completely clear. To be sure,
the number of frightening incidents involving submachine guns diminished
after the N.F.A. and a coordinated federal effort to halt production of
the guns.[37] This was also -a period of intensive state effort at
submachine gun control. The dangers of drawing a causal inference
between federal regulation and the end of the "Tommy-Gun Era" are,
however, manifold. Available data on the use of gangster weapons before
the N.F.A. are not precise; thus a meaningful before-and-after study is
difficult. More important, it is hard to determine whether the use of
these weapons was a phenomenon that had reached an unnatural peak just
before the advent of federal regulation and would have abated in any event.
The Federal Firearms Act of 1938[38] was the most significant
pre-1968 attempt to impose federal controls on the commerce and
possession of a broad spectrum of firearms. Shepherded through the
Congress by the National Rifle Association, the 1938 Act was pressed
more to submerge than to further the schemes for federal handgun
registration that regularly commuted from the justice Department to the
Congress (and back) during the 1930s.[39] [Page 140]
The 1938 Federal Firearms Act spread a thin coat of regulation over
all firearms and many classes of ammunition suitable for handguns. All
manufacturers, importers and dealers handling guns shipped in interstate
commerce were required to obtain federal licenses ($25 for manufacturers
and importers, $1 for dealers).[40] Licensees were prohibited from
knowingly shipping a firearm in interstate commerce to some felons, a
fugitive from justice, a person under indictment, or anyone required to
have a license under the law of the seller’s state who did not have a
license.[41] All these prohibited owner classes were also forbidden to
receive guns which were or had been in interstate commerce. Dealers were
also required to keep records of firearms transactions. Enforcement
responsibility was vested in the Secretary of the Treasury, who
delegated the assignment to the Internal Revenue Service.[42]
The apparent aims of the 1938 legislation were to create an
independent federal policy banning the receipt of firearms by what must
have been thought of as the criminal class of society, and to aid state
and local efforts at tighter control by prohibiting transactions that
would violate local laws. As a strategy to accomplish these goals,
however, the Federal Firearms Act was deficient in a number of respects,
and further crippled by a tradition of as less-than-Draconian
enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service. One major problem was that
the Act prohibited only the transfer of weapons to the prohibited
classes when the transferor knew or had reasonable cause to believe his
transferee was a felon, fugitive, etc.[43] but transferors were not
required to obtain positive identification of their customers or to take
other steps to verify the eligibility of customers under the act. From
the standpoint of prosecuting dealers for violation of the federal ban
against sale to felons, the requirement of knowledge, coupled with the
absence of a verification system, rendered the Act stillborn. When local
law required a license, however, the license requirement made both
dealer and customer liable under federal law if they were aware of the
local requirements.
Two other prominent loopholes in the 1938 Act deserve special
mention because they determined the shape of the 1968 Act. First, the
modest cost of a dealer’s license and the fact that dealers could freely
receive firearms in interstate commerce created strong incentives for
private parties to receive [Page 141] dealer licenses. This in turn
resulted in a large number of dealers (over 100,000 in the
mid-1960s)[44] and made any serious effort to monitor dealer compliance
with the act an enormous undertaking for an Internal Revenue Service
that did not, in any event, give the F.F.A. a very high priority. A
second problem was that customers from states that required licenses
could purchase guns in states that did not, as long as they did not give
the dealer in the no-license state any reason to have knowledge of their
lack of eligibility. The customer might have to lie to his supplier and
would himself be subject to federal criminal penalties, but guns were
readily available through this route.[45]
The Commissioner of Internal Revenue had been designated by the
Secretary of the Treasury to promulgate regulations to facilitate the
enforcement of the Act, but the regulations governing administration of
the F.F.A.[46] fell far short of the powers delegated by Congress. Under
the act, dealers were required to maintain "permanent records"[47] of
firearms transactions; under the regulations in effect until 1958
records had to be maintained for six years (ten years after 1958),[48]
and there was very little effective policing of dealer compliance with
the record-keeping provisions.[49] The F.F.A. regulations did not
require serial numbers on firearms (necessary to identify a particular
gun as having been the subject of a transaction) until 1958, and then
exempted .22-caliber rifles from the serial number requirement. More
significantly, no attempt was made to end by regulation the immunity
from prosecution enjoyed by dealers because they did not have to verify
the eligibility of their customers. Vale it was probably beyond the
rule-making power delegated by the Act to impose a waiting period or the
compulsory notification of police departments as to firearms
transactions, it could easily have been considered within the
Commissioner’s authority to require transferees to positively identify
themselves.[50] Indeed, it is a fascinating exercise to debate how many
of the changes brought about by the Gun Control Act of 1968 could have
been accomplished by rule-making power under the Federal Firearms Act of
1938 and other prior federal laws.[51] [Page 142]
Few resources were invested in the enforcement of the Federal
Firearms Act. In 1967 the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms division of the
Internal Revenue Service reported an investment of 35 man-years in
enforcing both the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Federal
Firearms Act of 1938.[52] During the period 1966-1968, a total of 275
arrests were reported under the Federal Firearms Act, and it has been
asserted that no dealers were charged with violating the Act until 1968.[53]
The lack of aggressive enforcement may obscure a deeper reason for
the failure of the F.F.A.: the tasks of keeping firearms out of the
hands of a small criminal class and keeping firearms from crossing those
state lines where they are unwelcome was an excruciatingly difficult job
in a country that averaged more than one gun per household[54] during
the career of the F.F.A. Strict regulation of gun dealers could have
done part of the job, but would have required enormous federal effort,
particularly since the great majority of all states did not require
licenses of gun purchasers.[55] And even if all dealers were regulated,
about half of all guns are acquired used in the United States, and more
than half of these guns are acquired from private individuals.[56] The
only way to attempt to control this secondary or hand-to-hand market
would be the registration of firearms in order to reduce the
hand-to-hand "float" of guns from eligible to ineligible owners.[57] Yet
few states had handgun registration during the life of the F.F.A.,[58]
and no state required the registration of all weapons.[59]
This is not to say that the Federal Firearms Act was useless, or
that more energetic enforcement would not have made some impact on the
problems created by the criminal use of firearms. The F.F.A. provided an
additional charge that could be lodged against a suspect arrested by
authorities for another offense and found in possession of a gun he was
prohibited from acquiring; even after the presumption that such a gun
had been in interstate [Page 143] commerce after the F.F.A. became
effective was struck down,[60] it was often possible to trace the
commercial history of the particular gun and file federal firearms
charges against a defendant in lieu of or in addition to the offense for
which he was arrested.[61] The law also could be and was used as a tool
to generate criminal liability for a convicted felon who had come to the
special attention of federal authorities for other reasons¾in much the
same fashion that Al Capone’s income tax, rather than the origins of his
income, proved his undoing.[62]
Although Homer Cummings was disappointed, the record seems to
indicate that Congress got pretty much what it wanted in the F.F.A.: a
symbolic denunciation of firearms in the hands of criminals, coupled
with an inexpensive and ineffective regulatory scheme that did not
inconvenience the American firearms industry or its customers. The
justice Department continued to recommend more extensive firearms
legislation for a few years,[63] but the Department’s emphasis on such
proposals faded after Cummings’ departure in 1939. Whatever the faults
of the F.F.A. as a regulatory scheme, they went unnoticed in a nation
where violent crime rates had been declining since the mid-1930s, and
the larger issues of war and economic recovery preoccupied public attention.
The period from 1939 (when the initial regulations under the F.F.A.
were issued) through 1957 (when new regulations were proposed) was
almost completely uneventful in relation to federal firearms control.
There was also very little legislative activity on the state and local
level.
In 1957 the Commissioner of Internal Revenue proposed a number of
changes in the regulations governing the manufacture and sale of
firearms [Page 144] under the F.F.A., including a serial number
requirement for all firearms, a rule requiring that "permanent"
dealer-records be maintained permanently rather than the six years
provided in the earlier regulations, and a series of changes in the type
of records that dealers were required to keep.[64] The proposals,
encountered stiff opposition from industry and gun-user groups, and the
regulations adopted in 1958 were somewhat less ambitious: the record
requirement was set at ten years, and serial numbers were required for
all firearms except .22-caliber rifles.[65] More important than the
details of these regulations was the continued low profile maintained by
the Internal Revenue Service in the enforcement of the Act, and the lack
of any evident pressure on the Service or on the Congress for more
stringent controls. While rates of violence remained high in the United
States in comparison with other western industrial countries, violent
crime rates were at far lower levels than had been experienced in the
1920s and ‘30s, and the public fear of crime had diminished to levels
that, in hindsight, symbolized domestic tranquility.
The first indication that a further federal role in firearms
regulation might come, and the first modem origin of the Gun Control Act
of 1968, was the increase in inexpensive imported firearms, largely
military surplus, that started to make serious inroads into the United
States market in the mid-1950s. In 1955 domestic manufacturers produced
556,000 rifles for the United States civilian market, and only 15,000
rifles were imported into this country for domestic sale;[66] by 1958
the number of rifles imported into the United States had increased to
200,000 whereas domestic production had fallen to 405,000.[67]
In 1958 Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a gun-producing
state, proposed a bill to prohibit "the importation of firearms
originally manufactured for military purposes."[68] This frankly
protectionist bill did not pass, but the Congress did prohibit the
re-importation of those weapons that the United States had sent abroad
under its foreign-assistance act.[69]
Foreign handguns, both military surplus and new production, began
to make some impact on the United States market during the same period.
In 1955, about 67,000 handguns were imported for sale to United States
civilians. By 1959 annual imports were 130,000; by 1966 the figure rose
to 500,000; and by 1968 unit volume of imported handguns had exceeded
the million mark.[70] The inexpensive, low-caliber, new-production
handguns that com- [Page 145] prised the bulk of United States imports
by the mid-1950s did not present the same type of direct competition to
established American firms as the rifle imports of the 1950s¾domestic
handguns were thought to be of higher quality, and the civilian handgun
market was growing quickly enough after 1965 to accommodate substantial
increases in both domestic and imported weapons.[71] Yet the imported
handgun was a specially vulnerable weapon to legislative attack, because
it was cheap and thus available to a broader spectrum of the population,
it was without the redeeming social virtue of a law enforcement or
sporting use, and the importers of such weapons had far less political
influence than domestic manufacturers.[72]
Some observers have suggested a direct connection between the
increase in gun imports and the renewal of congressional interest in the
easy availability of guns in the United States,[73] but the evidence on
this is Spotty.[74] When Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut (a major
gun-producing state) became chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on
juvenile Delinquency in 1961, he "directed the staff of the Subcommittee
to initiate a full-scale inquiry into the interstate mail order gun
problem."[75] During 1961-1962 staff studies of mail order guns sold to
residents of the District of Columbia and several states provided
evidence that "criminals, immature juveniles, and other irresponsible
persons were using the relative secrecy of the mail order-common carrier
method of obtaining firearms, because they could not purchase guns under
the laws in their own jurisdictions."[76]
Armed with these studies, the Dodd Committee conducted hearings in
1963 that sought to draw public attention to Dodd’s proposal to prohibit
the sale of handguns by mail order to persons under eighteen, and
require a notarized affidavit to be submitted with handgun mail orders
stating that the customer was old enough to purchase the gun and
otherwise legally entitled to receive it.[77] The emphasis in these
hearings was on the mail order mechanism, juveniles and felons as
purchasers, and "the cheap products which are so fre- [Page 146] quently
sold via mail order."[78] The bill was drafted with Department of the
Treasury help, and received support from an industry spokesman at the
1963 hearings.[79]
Five days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Senator Dodd
amended his bill to cover mail order traffic in shotguns and rifles.[80]
The bill died in the Senate Commerce Committee in 1964,[81] but the
forces leading to the adoption of the Gun Control Act of 1968 were
already at work.
In March of 1965, President Johnson sent Congress a message on
crime that requested an extension of the federal role in firearms
regulation.[82] The administration proposal, introduced as Senate Bill
1592, had been drafted by the Treasury staff with support from the
Department of Justice. The bill contained most of the key strategic
elements of the Gun Control Act of 1968: increases in the fees and
regulation of firearms dealers; a federal minimum age requirement for
handgun (21) and long gun (18) purchase; and a prohibition of handgun
sales to residents of another state. The bill was not referred out of
committee.[84]
In January 1967 a similar bill was introduced by Senator Dodd and
later amended to conform to the administration proposal forwarded that
February.[85] The bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee, the
parent committee of Dodd’s Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. In
April 1968, after failing to support the administration proposal, the
Judiciary Committee reported out a bill modeled on the President’s
proposal but limiting the ban on sales to citizens of another state to
handguns.[86] This bill became Title IV of the Omnibus Crime Control Act
of 1968, passed by the Senate in May 1968 and by the House on June 6,
the day after the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy.[87] [Page 147]
In the aftermath of the Robert Kennedy assassination, a number of
new firearms control measures were introduced, and the proposal to ban
interstate sales of long guns received new support. In October 1968 a
revised Gun Control Act was signed by the President.
During the debates on the Gun Control Act and its predecessors, two
other strategies of federal gun control were widely discussed. One was
the creation of federal jurisdiction and mandatory prison sentences for
violent crimes committed with guns.[88] This type of proposal was
generally offered as an alternative to stricter controls on gun traffic
by legislators generally opposed to gun-control laws. It received at
least symbolic approval in the Gun Control Act’s provision for
additional penalties when crimes which are federal felonies are
committed with guns.[89] A second approach widely discussed after the
Robert Kennedy assassination was for some system of federal firearms
owner registration or licensing.[90]
The Gun Control Act of 1968, like its 1938 ancestor, was thus
something of a compromise candidate at the time of its
passage-representing concessions on the part of those opposed to any
further federal controls and those who desired extensive further federal
involvement. The primary goal of the statute, federal assistance to
state efforts at control, was not the chief aim of its sponsors nor the
principal fear of its opponents.
There are other parallels between the processes leading to the 1938
and 1968 Acts. In each case, administrative concern, spearheaded by the
justice Department, provided a necessary, if not a sufficient, backdrop
for congressional action.[91] And the symbolism of gun control seemed
more important to the vast majority of Congress than the specifics of
regulation. Finally, the gun control issue remained a relatively
unimportant one for the Congress. No serious effort was made to oversee
or evaluate the administration of the Act.[92] No committee of Congress
maintained any special competence in the substantive issue of federal
gun regulation.[93]
The links between domestic violence during the 1960s and the 1968
Act are important but susceptible to overstatement. The John Kennedy
assassina- [Page 148] tion helped focus attention on the ready
availability of mail-order guns; the Martin Luther King and Robert
Kennedy killings put pressure on Congress at crucial points in the
legislative career of the Act, just as the escape from jail of John
Dillinger had expedited the passage of the National Firearms Act of
1934. But the basic approach of the 1968 Act had been worked out by the
Treasury Department in 1965. And the only legislative initiatives
produced by the Robert Kennedy shooting, a series of proposals for a
national strategy of licensing gun owners, did not affect the shape of
the 1968 Act.
If the violence of the mid-1960s had little impact on the
provisions of the Gun Control Act, it had a profound effect on the
problems that the act addressed. Urban riots during the period 1964-1968
and increased fear of crime had a manifold impact on the quality of
American urban life. One consequence of this increasing turmoil and fear
was an increased demand for firearms as instruments of self-defense,
particularly in big cities. Handgun sales, the best index of demand for
urban self-defense weapons, averaged 600,000 a year during the first
four years of the 1960s; by 1966 the market for handguns had doubled to
1.2 million; by 1968 the market had almost doubled again, to an
estimated 2.4 million, although this figure may have been abnormally
high because importers and private citizens were rushing to purchase
imported handguns before the import restrictions in the 1968 act came
into effect.[94] The increase in urban gun ownership was paralleled by
an increase in urban gun violence. Perhaps the most spectacular case
study of gun violence was the city of Detroit. In 1965 Detroit
experienced a total of 140 homicides; 55 of these, or 39 per cent, were
committed with guns. Three years later 72 per cent of Detroit’s 389
killings were committed with guns.[95] The increase in gun violence in
other urban areas, though less pronounced, was steady and substantial:
during the period 1964-1968, gun homicide in the United States had
increased 89 per cent, while homicide by all other means had increased
22 per cent.[96] By 1969 a simple majority of homicides in major urban
areas were committed with handguns, and the interstate flow of handguns
into cities with restrictive state and local controls was greater than
at any other time since the 1930s.[98]
II. THE ENDS AND MEANS OF THE GUN CONTROL ACT
The Gun Control Act signed by President Johnson on October 22,
1968, was an omnibus measure reflecting a variety of congressional
purposes. [Page 149] Included in the Act were amendments to the National
Firearms Act of 1934, extending its coverage and relatively prohibitive
tax to "destructive devices" (bombs, hand grenades, land mines, and
similar mechanisms) and altering the registration provisions of the
N.F.A. to rescue its registration requirement from a successful 1968
constitutional challenge.[99] The Act also mandated additional penalties
for persons convicted of committing federal crimes with firearms.[100]
But the major objectives of the Act were three:
(1) Eliminating the interstate traffic in firearms and
ammunition that had previously frustrated state and local efforts to
license, register, or restrict ownership of guns.
(2) Denying access to firearms to certain congressionally
defined groups, including minors, convicted felons, and persons who had
been adjudicated as mental defectives or committed to mental institutions.
(3) Ending the importation of all surplus military firearms and
all other guns unless certified by the Secretary of the Treasury as
"particularly suitable for ... sporting purposes."[101]
The centerpiece of the new regulatory scheme was the ban on
interstate shipments to or from persons who do not possess federal
licenses as dealers, manufacturers, importers or collectors, coupled
with the declaration that it was unlawful for any person other than a
federal-license holder to engage in the business of manufacturing or
dealing in firearms, whether or not such a business involves interstate
commerce.[102] The Act thus granted federal licensees a monopoly on
interstate transactions and required a federal license to engage in any
but isolated intrastate transactions.
While private citizens were to be excluded from commerce in guns,
federally licensed dealers were to be much more strenuously regulated.
The fees for all federal licenses were increased (the dealer license
from $1 to $10),[103] minimum standards for licensees were set,[104] and
the Secretary of the Treasury was given broad powers to establish
mechanisms for regulating licensed manufacturers and dealers.[105]
Having established federal regulation of those in the business of
making, selling and importing firearms, as well as all interstate
aspects of commerce in firearms, the Act pursued its major alms with a
series of criminal prohibitions. [Page 150]
A. State Aid
To effectuate the state aid goals of the Act, all nonlicensees were
prohibited from shipping guns to other private parties in another state
and from transferring guns to persons they knew or had reason to believe
were residents of another state;[106] and dealers were prohibited from
shipping to private citizens in other states and from selling to those
who the dealer knew or had reason to believe resided out of state.[107]
In the regulations promulgated under the Act, all dealers had to sign a
form indicating a customer had produced identification showing he was
not a resident of another state. This form, which also identified the
firearms sold and gave the purchaser’s name, address and description,
was retained by the dealer and made available for inspection by Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms agents.[108] Thus, while the Act required the same
showing of knowledge or notice to convict the dealer as the Federal
Firearms Act of 1938, the duty of the dealer to obtain identification
made a sale to an out-of-state resident depend on either false
identification by the customer or willful law violation by the dealer.
Private citizens, who could sell a gun or two from time to time, were
not under a duty to verify the name and address of a transferee or to
keep a record of the transaction.
The regulation of interstate traffic (in the Act and its
regulations) was stronger than under the Federal Firearms Act, but there
were, of course, opportunities for evasion. The sale of guns by
nondealers was, from the beginning, outside of any record-keeping
requirement of the Act. For a private party, the knowing transfer or
interstate transportation of firearms was illegal but rarely
dangerous.[109] Moreover, enforcing the ban on sales to residents of
another state required federal agents to inspect the forms kept by the
dealers.
The credibility of the enforcement system was tied from the outset
to the amount of manpower the government invested in inspecting dealer
records. However, from the dealer’s standpoint there was much greater
risk in maintaining a high volume of illegal sales than was true before
the Act, inasmuch as thorough periodic inspection could turn up patterns
of illegal sales. For nondealers who used false identification to obtain
guns and transport them to other, states the threat posed by the record
system was far more modest; the use of a false name in a federal form
meant that inspection of the form and an attempt by enforcement
personnel to verify the identity of the purchaser could show that the
law was broken but would give no clue as to who broke the law or where
the gun or offender could be located. A nondealer [Page 151] could
spread his purchases out among a number of legitimate dealers, thereby
obtaining a fair number of guns with relative safety for long periods of
time. In order to apprehend violators of this type, enforcement agents
would have to intervene at the other end of an interstate, transaction,
making, through undercover work) sales of firearms by nonlicensees
hazardous.
Some of the problems associated with enforcing the ban on sales to
nonstate residents can be tied to the decentralized nature of the
firearms transaction records under the Act. The decision to keep records
decentralized was made by the Treasury and endorsed by Congress[110] in
part to keep the regulatory aspects of the federal law distinct from any
system that could be called "gun registration." The decentralized
records were a tightened-up version of the record-keeping required by
the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, whereas "registration" was the second
dirtiest word in the vocabulary of any opponent of federal firearms
regulation (confiscation was the ultimate expletive but the two were
often equated).[111] In part, the bad reputation of "registration" may
stem from the use of a registration requirement in the National Firearms
Act-where the real legislative intent was to reduce drastically
ownership of covered weapons.[112] But whatever its origins this fear of
central records is reflected in both the Gun Control Act and the
regulations issued under its mandate.
B. Ownership Prohibitions
The second major aim of the Gun Control Act was to extend the list
of classes prohibited by federal law from gun ownership and to
strengthen the regulatory mechanism designed to enforce the federal
prohibition. The Federal Firearms Act had prohibited the receipt of a
firearm by felons, fugitives from justice, persons then under felony
indictment in state or federal courts, and persons not qualified to own
the firearm in question in their state or locality.[113] The list of
prohibited classes in the 1968 Act was larger in the number of persons
prohibited and included a wide variety of disqualified classes. The new
federal prohibition barred licensees from the knowing transfer of a gun
or ammunition to:
(1) Minors (under eighteen for shotguns and rifles; under
twenty-one for handguns). [Page 152]
(2) Persons convicted of a state or federal felony, as well as
the fugitives and defendants under indictment covered by the F.F.A.
(3) Adjudicated mental defectives and any person who had been
committed to a mental institution.
(4) Persons who are* unlawful users of or "addicted to
marijuana or any depressant or stimulant drug . . . or narcotic drug."[114]
In addition to these prohibitions, it was unlawful for any person
in the prohibited classes to receive any firearm or ammunition that had
been shipped in interstate commerce.[115] And Title VII of the Gun
Control Act also prohibited felons, persons who have received
dishonorable discharges former United States citizens and aliens
illegally from the Armed Forces, in the United States from receiving,
possessing or transporting guns "in commerce or affecting commerce."[116]
The purpose of these prohibitions was to deny access to guns and
ammunition to these defined special risk groups or, failing that, to
punish possession of a firearm as a federal offense whether or not the
possession was in violation of local law. In order to understand how
these prohibitions might work in practice, it is necessary to refer to
the general scheme of regulation established by the Act. Since it is
unlawful for a dealer, manufacturer or importer to transfer a firearm or
ammunition to a nonlicensee only if the transferor knows or has reason
to believe his customer is ineligible to receive the commodity, the
dealer can be apprehended for violating the law only when the
regulations governing his transfer require him to verify his customer’s
eligibility.[117]
The federal ban on sales to minors was supported by a regulation
requiring the dealer to verify his customer’s age by inspecting a
document that shows the age on its face.[118] Unless the customer uses
false identification, minors cannot buy guns from dealers who are in
compliance with the Gun Control Act. This is not to say that firearms
were unavailable to minors; guns could be purchased from nondealers, who
were not required to verify age prior to transfer, and minors could
always persuade adults to buy guns for them from federally licensed
dealers. But the direct sale from dealer to minor was regulated by the
verification requirement, in the same way that the ban against sale to
nonresidents was supported by the requirement that a transferee’s
address be verified.[119]
The ban against sales to felons, drug users and other prohibited
classes was not supported by a similar verification procedure. A dealer
needed only [Page 153] to take his customer’s word for the fact that he
was not ineligible to receive a gun or ammunition; the customer who made
false statements of this kind would be criminally liable if the
transaction were later investigated, but the dealer was not in jeopardy.
Thus, while obtaining a firearm is illegal for these persons, the
regulation of dealers did not shut off the access to guns for those who
were willing to misrepresent their status.
The Act’s limited dealer verification system approaches the natural
boundaries of personal identification in the United States today. Age
and address are two elements of personality that appear on drivers’
licenses, selective service cards, and other significant documents that
almost all adults carry. We do not live in a society that issues cards
to all citizens showing whether they have been committed to mental
institutions or convicted of felonies. Verification of such status would
thus have to depend either on taking the customer’s word for it (and
auditing transfer records later to detect misrepresentation), or on
creating separate screening procedures. One method of dealer
verification would be a system where the dealer forwards a notice of a
proposed transaction to a federal agency, which then checks a central
record file to determine a customer’s eligibility. Such a system, if
designed to verify eligibility before purchase, would require a waiting
period before any covered firearm could be purchased. It would also
require centrally stored federal records of all the data relevant to
determining eligibility, or elaborate referrals to other state or
federal record files.[120] An alternative system would be for persons
who desire to purchase guns to establish their eligibility in advance by
applying for a license and use the license as the means by which the
dealer verifies that he is making a lawful firearm or ammunition sale.[121]
The Gun Control Act of 1968 stopped short of mandating either
licensing or the cumbersome nationwide verification of individual
transactions. With respect to felons, mental defectives, and drug users,
the dealer’s position under the 1968 Act is similar to his status under
the Federal Firearms Act of 1938. The illegal customer may, however, be
at greater risk. If a felon uses his own name and lies about his
eligibility on the Form 4473 he is required by regulation to fill out,
an audit of the dealer and check of the customer’s criminal record will
show he had violated at least two federal criminal laws,[122] and he can
be traced from the purchase record.[123] If the customer uses false
identification, gets someone else to buy from a dealer, [Page 154] or
buys from a nonlicensee, the federal record system will not constitute a
direct threat to him. However, if state or federal agents find him with
a gun, a check of existing records will show whether the firearm was
sold after the effective date of the Act and was thus received by him in
violation of federal law.[124]
In sum, the scheme of regulation adopted in 1968 was of limited use
in making firearms more difficult for ineligible classes to obtain, but
the federal prohibitions and record-keeping requirements made it
possible to convict persons ineligible to have guns if they were later
apprehended with a firearm.
C. Limitation of Imports
Two provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968 establish a federal
strategy for limiting imported guns. Section 922(1) declares it unlawful
"for any person knowingly to import or bring into the United States any
firearm or ammunition . . ." or "knowingly . . . to receive" any
imported firearm or ammunition "except as provided in section
925(d)."[125] Section 925(d) allows the Secretary of the Treasury to
permit importation if "the person importing . . . the firearm or
ammunition establishes to the satisfaction of the Secretary" that the
firearm
(1) is being imported for scientific, research or training
purposes; or
(2) is unserviceable and is being imported as a curio or museum
piece; or
(3) is not a weapon covered by the revised National Firearms
Act "and is generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily
adaptable to sporting purposes, excluding surplus military firearms"; or
(4) is being reimported by the person who took it out of the
United States.[126]
Apparently, the Secretary of the Treasury was not compelled by the
Act to permit the importation of any firearm or ammunition (he "may
authorize" imports, rather than being told he "shall authorize" them),
but he is forbidden to authorize imports except in the four
circumstances outlined above. Of the exceptions listed by the section,
only subsection (3) is of importance to the importation of firearms for
the civilian market. Subsection (3) expressly bans the importation of
surplus military firearms and allows the authorization of other firearms
and ammunition only if they are "generally recognized as particularly
suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes."[127]
While the general intent of Congress in limiting firearm imports is
reason- [Page 155] ably clear, the intended scope of the exception in
section 925(d) is not readily discernible from its language or
legislative history.[128] The term "sporting purposes" is not defined in
the statute, making it difficult to give a meaning to the phrase
"particularly suitable to sporting purposes." Does this mean that a
firearm must be a fungible sporting weapon, as useful as but no more
useful than a domestically produced firearm, or that a firearm must be
in some way uniquely suitable to a particular sporting purpose, so that
exclusion of the gun would deny United States residents access to a form
of shooting sport? If the latter is the correct interpretation, why must
a gun that needs no adaptation be "particularly suitable," while a gun
that needs adaptation must only be "readily adaptable" to a sporting
purpose?
There are reasons to suppose that Congress wanted to give this
exception a narrow meaning. The other exceptions described in section 92
5 (d) are quite specific and apply to particular firearms rather than
classes of firearms, and the language introducing the section appears to
give the Secretary discretion to ban the import of even those weapons
that could qualify under 925(d).[129]
The regulations issued to implement the ban on importation
delegated responsibility for approving import permits to the
Commissioner of Internal Revenue and provided that he could decide the
"sporting purposes" issue "with the assistance of an advisory board to
be appointed by the Commissioner."[130] The regulations did not attempt
to define what was meant by "sporting purposes." They did, however,
provide for the compilation of an "import list" of firearms, thereby
permitting the approval of guns for import in large numbers by different
firms, once the specific model had been approved.[131]
It is difficult to characterize with precision the theory that
animated the provisions of section 925(d) and its supporting
regulations. As "protectionist" legislation, the ban on military surplus
makes sense, but the further restriction on firearms not suitable for
sporting purposes is puzzling. Certainly a simple ban on military
surplus would have produced fewer objections to the effect that the
United States was discriminating against its trading partners by
prohibiting the importation of weapons it allowed to be domestically
produced.[132] Further, the "sporting purposes" test would seem to have
[Page 156] allowed the importation of firearms, particularly shotguns,
that had been troublesome competition for American manufacturers,’"
while excluding firearms, particularly low-priced handguns, that had not
posed an important competitive threat to the established United States
firearms industry.[134] Finally, if the scheme of regulation was
protectionist, one would have expected a more protectionist
interpretation of the broad powers delegated by Congress than turned out
to be the case.[135]
At least in part, Congress seems to have been responding to a
perceived threat to public safety that resulted from the importation of
low-priced "Saturday Night Specials" from abroad. Testimony before
Congress suggests three themes associated with these guns: (1) they were
cheap and plentiful; (2) they were low-quality and unsafe; (3) they were
used in violent crimes. The image projected was not just that of a gun
but of a gun and a user class. And the goal implicit in the legislation
apparently was to reduce access to guns for high-risk groups by
restricting the supply of cheap guns, particularly cheap handguns.[136]
If this was the congressional design, the legislative scheme was
deficient in at least three respects. First, there was no guarantee that
imposing a "sporting purposes" test would automatically reduce the
number of cheap imported handguns involved in crime. Second, while the
law covered both firearms and ammunition, it did not explicitly cover
the importation of firearms parts; while the Act defined two major parts
of a firearm as "firearms" and thus subject to restriction, other parts
could be imported from abroad and assembled in the United States.[137]
Finally, of course, there was no guarantee that the same weapons that
had been imported could not be domestically produced at slightly higher
price and cause the same problems. A ban on imports might have important
short-run effects on civilian acquisition of firearms and some long-term
impact as a result of increased prices. But if the law was addressed to
the issue of civilian ownership of firearms unsuitable for sporting
purposes, the artificial distinction between foreign and domestic
manufacture in the Gun Control Act of 1968 left an aura of [Page 157]
cognitive dissonance that was to become one of the major gun control
issues of the 1970s.
III. MEASURING THE EFFECTS OF THE ACT
With relatively minor amendments,[138] the Gun Control Act of 1968
has been the governing federal firearms control policy for more than
five years, a period sufficient to invite inquiry about its impact. This
part of the article (1) presents data on the administration of the Act,
(2) explores the rate of civilian acquisition and use of handguns after
the "Saturday Night Special" ban, and (3) analyzes how the act affected
the interstate flow of handguns into states and cities that attempt to
restrict gun ownership.
A. Administering the Act
One important lesson to be derived from studying the Federal
Firearms Act of 1938 is the critical role played by those who administer
and enforce firearms legislation. Enforcement of the 1968 Act¾as was the
case with the two prior efforts at firearms control¾was vested in the
Department of the Treasury and, within the Treasury, in the Bureau of
Internal Revenue. In 1942 the Commissioner of Internal Revenue assigned
firearms enforcement responsibility to a division within his bureau that
supervised the tax collection, regulation and criminal enforcement
functions of federal law in relation to alcohol and tobacco. The
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division (A.T.F.) had a central office in
Washington, with a director who was subordinate to the Commissioner of
Internal Revenue, and seven regional administrators, each responsible to
the Regional Director of the Internal Revenue Service. In 1972 the
Treasury reorganized A.T.F. as a separate bureau, no longer under the
Commissioner of Internal Revenue.[139]
The old A.T.F. division had been responsible for both criminal
enforcement and regulatory enforcement of federal firearms laws since
1951, but firearms regulation had a relatively low priority and a small
share of the division’s manpower was detailed to firearms
enforcement.[140] The Gun Control Act of [Page 158] 1968 and support
within the Administration for firearms regulations shifted the manpower
priorities of A.T.F. rather quickly. During fiscal 1968, the last full
fiscal year prior to the Act, 311 man-years were listed as devoted to
firearms enforcement.[141] In fiscal 1970, the first full year after the
Act went into effect, enforcement effort was reported as 814
man-years.[142] Thus, an early impact of the Act and of the interest in
gun regulation that motivated its passage was to put the federal
government in the firearms regulation business at a level of manpower
that was much greater than in prior years.
The two major areas in which A. T. F. invests manpower are
"regulatory enforcement" and "criminal enforcement" of the federal
firearms laws.[143] Regulatory enforcement is the supervision of federal
licensees¾importers, manufacturers, and dealers. At the dealer level,
the key tasks of regulatory enforcement are the investigation of initial
applications for dealer licenses and compliance investigations to
determine whether dealers are conducting business in accord with federal
law. The investigation of an initial application involves an inspection
of the proposed premises, a background investigation of the applicant,
and an interview about the nature of the business that is contemplated.
A compliance investigation involves re-inspection of business premises,
inspection of the dealer’s records, and an audit of a few firearms
transaction report forms to determine whether the information is
recorded properly and whether a check of the customer’s listed address
and criminal record shows any violation of federal law. Apparent
violations of law may, in the agent’s discretion, be referred to the
criminal investigation staff in the same A.T.F. office for further
investigation.
A larger share of A.T.F. manpower is devoted to criminal
enforcement activities by special agents with arrest powers.[144] While
regulatory enforcement is focused on dealers with federal licenses,
criminal enforcement activities are devoted to the broad spectrum of
illegal firearms possession and traffic. A relatively small part of
criminal enforcement work involves licensed dealers-estimated at less
than 30 per cent, with no precise breakdown available.[145] Other types
of investigation include undercover work to find black-market sellers,
investigation of persons who are suspected of illegal possession as a
result of information passed on by regulatory enforcement [Page 159]
staff, local police or informants, and investigation of persons who are
special targets of local or federal authorities.
Available statistics, though incomplete, give some indication of A.
T. F. performance after the Gun Control Act of 1968 came into existence.
As to regulation, the first effect of the Act was to generate the need
to make a large number of investigations of applications for dealer
licenses. The Treasury had hoped that raising the annual fee for federal
dealer licenses to ten dollars and instituting standards for -granting
licenses would reduce the number of persons applying for licenses,
thereby making meaningful regulation of dealer activities feasible. But
the higher fee was offset by the fact that, after the Act, the only way
to receive firearms in interstate commerce was to obtain a federal
license. The number of dealer and collector licenses in effect never
dropped below 60,000[146] and is presently estimated at 160,000,
compared to about 100,000 during the early 1960s.[147]
The need to investigate license applications reduced the manpower
available for compliance investigations and, to some extent, for
criminal enforcement initiatives. The press of putting the law into
effect, and the decentralized tradition of A.T.F. activities, also put
limits on the ability of A.T.F. to invest resources in strategic
planning to define priority problems and measure the effectiveness of
regulatory and criminal enforcement efforts. And the focus on initial
applications and other "start-up costs" associated with the Act were
followed, in 1970, by a federal law requiring A.T.F. to regulate
explosives.[148]
Yet criminal enforcement activities did pick up substantially, as
shown by the summary data on federal firearms cases for the fiscal years
1968-1973 in Table 1.
TABLE 1
FEDERAL FIREARMS LAW CASES RECOMMENDED FOR PROSECUTION,
INDICTMENT AND CONVICTIONS BY FISCAL YEAR¾1968-73
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
Cases Recommended for
Prosecution by A.T.F.
375
1341
3212
3407
4031
3283
Indictments
175
331
1309
1888
2444
2257
Convictions
89
178
577
1148
1451
1719
Source: U.S. Treasury Dep't. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms, Statistics Division.
[Page 160]
As Table 1 shows, cases recommended for prosecution rose from 375
during fiscal 1968 (the last full year before the passage of the Act) to
over 3200 during 1970 (the first full fiscal year after). Convictions,
which occur some time after enforcement efforts end, increased from 89
during fiscal 1968 to 1148 during fiscal 1971.
Some data are available on the pattern of criminal enforcement
before and after the Gun Control Act. The statistics division of A.T.F.
records information on charges recommended and results by the title in
the Gun Control Act under which charges were recommended. This gives
some indication of the type of activity that led to the recommendation
of charges, because Title II of the Gun Control Act deals with machine
guns, sawed-off shotguns, and destructive devices subject to special
taxes and registration, while Title VII of the Act deals exclusively
with the receipt or possession of firearms by prohibited classes. This
type of reporting does not give an accurate picture of the extent of
enforcement activity relating to interstate flow of weapons, inasmuch as
Title I of the Act, which prohibits such transfers, also prohibits
dealing in firearms without a federal license and a variety of other
activities.[149] Table 2 shows the pattern of criminal enforcement by
fiscal year for A.T.F. referrals for prosecution.
The figures in Table 2 suggest a continued heavy emphasis by A.T.F. on
TABLE 2
PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF CASES REFERRED FOR PROSECUTION
BY TYPE OF CHARGE BY FISCAL YEAR 1968-73
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
National Firearms Act
Charges (N.F.A. Title II of the Gun Control Act
55
49
36
42
39
39
Prohibited Persons Re-
ceiving or Possessing a Firearma (Federal Firearm Act and Title
VII of the Gun Control Act
39
39
35
34
27
29
Title I of Gun Control Act
22
19
30
28
Combined Chargesb
5
12
7
5
4
4
Total
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
(375)
(1341)
(3212)
(3407)
(4031)
(3283)
a Includes any case with a Title VII recommendation.
b Excludes Title VII cases.
Source: U.S. Treasury Dep't, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms,
Statistics Division.
[Page 161]
the special class of weapons regulated under the provisions of the
amended National Firearms Act (heavy in relation to the number of such
weapons in circulation), and indicate that at least as many prosecutions
are recommended because a prohibited person has been found in possession
of or has received a firearm as are the result of detecting violations
of the ban on sales to nonstate residents and illegal transportation and
sales.
What these figures do not show is the proportion of A.T.F.
enforcement effort that is devoted to the "state aid" aims of the Act,
or the impact of A.T.F. criminal enforcement on the flow of guns. No
figures are kept on the proportion of criminal enforcement effort or
referrals that relate to dealers or major traffickers, or on the number
of firearms involved in the transactions investigated.
A humbling comparison can be made between the enforcement resources
available to A.T.F. and the size of the problem it is charged with
policing. About 5,000,000 new firearms were sold on the civilian market
in 1973, and approximately the same number of used firearms changed
hands. Audits of firearms transaction records show apparent irregularity
in a large enough proportion of these to generate several hundred
thousand criminal investigations a year if all transaction forms were
audited, and that is not the major source of the illegal interstate
movement of firearms.[150] There may be as many as half a million
violations of the Gun Control Act of 1968 each year, with most of them
at least one step beyond the record system imposed on dealers and
first-purchasers. Criminal investigation of transfers outside the record
system requires a considerable amount of manpower, invested in proactive
police work aimed at detecting victimless crime. Under these conditions
the primary determinant of the degree of enforcement will be the
resources committed to enforcement. And as the dip in case referrals for
1973 might suggest, manpower allocated to A.T.F. firearms enforcement
has remained relatively stable in the past two years.[151]
If limited manpower is one major constraint on achieving the "state
aid" purposes of the Act, lack of information on the pattern of illicit
traffic in firearms has also proved to be a major obstacle. Prior to
1972 there were no major investigations by the Bureau of where the
firearms that were frustrating state and local gun control efforts came
from. A series of studies of interstate handgun traffic was begun in
1972 and will be referred to in the discussion of the impact of the law
on the interstate gun problem. Information [Page 162] on the number of
firearms produced in the United States was not compiled by A.T.F. until
1972, and data on firearms sales in the various states and regions are
still not available.
A further limit on the ultimate effectiveness of A.T.F.’s
enforcement effort has been the types of firearms traffic left
uncontrolled under the Act and the regulations established to govern its
enforcement. Detailed records of firearms transfer by dealers are now
required, but these records are kept by the dealer and are only
accessible to the Bureau during compliance investigations or when agents
are alerted to a particular gun or dealer as a result of other
information.[152] Whatever value firearms transaction records would have
-in providing. a picture of retail firearms traffic and in putting the
Bureau on notice of special high-risk high-volume sales patterns-was
sacrificed to decentralization. And nondealer gun transfers-probably 30
per cent of total gun traffic and a far higher proportion of illegal
sales[153]¾are not subject to any federal record-keeping requirement.
A final limit on the effectiveness of Bureau efforts is the sheer
volume of firearms in civilian hands. Regulation of firearms traffic as
a whole differs from efforts to control submachine guns and hand
grenades, not in degree but in kind. The number of National Firearms Act
weapons in civilian hands in the United States is small, and federal law
was explicitly designed to keep ownership low.[154] Civilian firearms
ownership exceeds 100,000,000,[155] and any federal efforts at
regulation must involve only a small percentage of gun transactions or
an enormous regulatory effort. For example, the director of A.T.F.
reported an estimated 25,000 dealer-compliance investigations during
fiscal 1973;[156] a sample of 100 such investigations conducted by the
Chicago regional office showed an average of five firearms transaction
forms were traced for criminal record and address verification in the
course of each investigation. If that approximates the national average,
about 125,000 transactions a year are verified in the course of the
Bureau’s regulatory enforcement. That is an impressive workload, but
still constitutes less than two per cent of the annual retail commerce
in guns.
Notwithstanding its limits, efforts to effectuate the Gun Control
Act reflect a much more serious commitment of resources and support than
resulted from the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, and the 1968 Act is
worthy of more attention than it has previously received. [Page 163]
B. The Saga of the "Saturday Night Special"
As previously discussed, the Gun Control Act prohibited the
importation of all military surplus firearms and any other firearms
unless the Secretary of the Treasury found them to be generally
recognized as "particularly suitable for or readily adapted to sporting
purposes."[157] This section discusses the interpretation of that
provision, the impact of the law as interpreted on handgun importation,
sales, and misuse, and the consequences of the "Saturday Night Special"
ban on the federal firearms control debates of the 1970s.
I have previously suggested that the operative provisions of
section 925(d) could have been interpreted as giving the Secretary of
the Treasury power to end all firearms importation into the United
States.[158] That reading, heavily dependent on the fact that the
Secretary was not required to issue any import authorization, was never
given any serious consideration in discussions of the Act[159] or in the
regulations issued under it.[160] The argument against such a reading is
strong: why would Congress so obliquely delegate to the Treasury the
power to determine at will whether firearms could be imported, and why
would Congress establish criteria for importation if it was delegating
the power to ignore them? In any event, the Internal Revenue Service
read section 925(d)(3) as requiring the Service to permit the
importation of all firearms that met the standards established by
subsection (3), and the "sporting purposes" test became the border
between permissible and impermissible importation.[161]
Construing this provision created no major difficulty in the
regulation of shotguns and rifles, for different reasons. The bulk of
the foreign-made shotguns imported into the United States are of high
quality and reputation. While these weapons were a major competitive
challenge to American manufacturers, it would be hard to imagine a
"sporting purposes" test that would exclude a large number of them.
Rifle imports presented no major interpretation problem under 925(d)(3)
because surplus military weapons, constituting the bulk of low-priced
rifles during the late 1950s and 1960s, were excluded from the United
States whether or not they were particularly suitable for sporting
purposes.[162] Rifle imports dropped somewhat after the Act [Page 164]
went into effect, while shotgun imports more than doubled between 1968
and 1973.[163]
The hard questions concerning the "sporting purposes" test related
to handguns, because the handgun, whether domestic or imported, is not
primarily a sporting weapon. In contrast to rifles and shotguns,
handguns are owned more frequently in cities than in rural areas, are
rarely used to hunt with, and are viewed by consumers as weapons of
self-defense.[164] Handguns are carried by some hunters as a "finishing
weapon" for killing wounded animals, and are widely used for informal
target practice ("plinking"). But it is unclear whether these uses would
or should have been considered sporting purposes, nor is it clear what
kind of handguns should be considered generally recognized as
particularly suited to shooting at tin cans. The essential problem,
then, was that the "sporting purposes" test was something of a non
sequitur when applied to handguns, because the great majority of them
were not, in any event, intended for sporting purposes.
Under these circumstances, interpreting the "sporting purposes"
standard was bound to cause problems. One approach would have been to
prohibit the importation of any pistols or revolvers. This was
apparently within the power of the Treasury but would have produced a
storm of partially justified criticism, since Congress had not
explicitly singled out handguns for exclusion. A second approach would
have been for the Internal Revenue Service to issue regulations
requiring importers to establish to its satisfaction that a particular
shipment of handguns would be used for shooting-sports activities.
Though this interpretation would doubtless have produced controversy, it
seems most clearly in line with a congressional "sporting purposes"
test: why should such a test govern importation decisions if
congressional intent were not to allow the importation of only sporting
weapons? Such a regulation could be justified for handguns, as opposed
to rifles and shotguns, because long guns were, as a class, generally
regarded as sporting weapons, while handguns were not.[165] The effect
of this kind of regulation, if the burden of proof rested on the
importer in each case, would have been to reduce handgun imports
drastically and confine the import market to target pistols for which
domestic substitutes were either unavailable or so much more expensive
that seeking permission to import the weapons would be worth its
considerable trouble. Whether this would have resulted in substantially
re- [Page 165] ducing total handgun sales or handgun violence is a
question to be considered later.
The approach taken by the Internal Revenue Service was to establish
a system for grading pistols and revolvers, together with a list of
approved guns that could be imported with relatively little red tape.
Guns without specified safety accessories, or understated minimum size,
were excluded. The import criteria for grading other weapons included
gun and barrel length, type of frame construction, and weight. And the
Service reserved the right "to preclude importation of any revolver or
pistol which achieves an apparent qualifying score but does not adhere
to the provisions of section 925(d)(3) of . . . Ch. 44, Title 18,
U.S.C."[167]
The impact of these "Factoring Criteria for Weapons" was to exclude
very small handguns and those without safety devices, and to create
standards of frame construction and handgun weight to qualify for
import. The weight requirement would differ with different weapons,
because deficiencies in weight can be compensated for -by the presence
of target equipment, safety features, or other graded items.[168]
There is a ring of arbitrariness about a single "passing score"
determining whether or not a handgun is a "Saturday Night Special"¾a
revolver with a 44-point score would not be approved, whereas one with
46 points became "particularly suited to sporting purposes." But the
"Factoring Criteria for Weapons" did give a measure of certainty to the
process of approving or disapproving handguns for importation. Perhaps
the standards gave a bit too much certainty, in that foreign
manufacturers could integrate U.S. specifications into the design of
handguns.
The theories behind the various criteria chosen by the Commissioner
are not explicitly set out in any public documents. Frame length and
barrel length of a handgun are relevant to its concealability, and very
short handguns are not likely to be used for formal target shooting.
Weapon weight and frame construction may be related to durability.
Safety features make it less likely that a handgun will discharge
accidentally, particularly when dropped. The caliber of a handgun may be
of some relevance to the likelihood of its being used for a sporting
purpose (high-caliber handguns receive extra points), yet the majority
of handguns used for informal "plinking" are .22 caliber, if only
because .22 caliber ammunition is relatively inexpensive.
Taken together, the standards employ criteria that are to some
degree relevant measures of handgun quality, whether a handgun is used
for self-defense [Page 166] or sporting purposes. But neither the
criteria nor the cutoff points (45 for revolvers, 75 for pistols) have
become accepted standards for defining the "Saturday Night Special." In
1973, A.T.F. attempted to determine the proportion of guns in a sample
of confiscated handguns that could be classified as "Saturday Night
Specials." Instead of using the "Factoring Criteria for Weapons" cutoff,
the Bureau used three different standards-guns retailing for less than
$50, guns with a barrel length of three inches or less, and guns of .32
caliber or less. "[T]he problem of determining what percentage of the
total guns traced fell in the category of ‘Saturday Night Specials’ was
resolved by taking the total number of guns in each of these three
categories, adding the totals, and dividing by three to arrive at what
was called a ‘composite’ average."[169]
What is remarkable about the series of events that led to the
"Factoring Criteria" and the list of foreign firearms approved for
importation is the persistent nondefinition of the key terms in the
controlling federal law. We have now traced through the three
significant levels of congressional and agency declaration-the statute
itself, the regulations issued to implement the statute, and the
"factoring criteria for weapons." At no point in this sequence is the
phrase "particularly suitable for sporting purposes" or any of its
constituent terms explicitly defined. Yet at the end of this process,
A.T.F. had created a set of precise criteria to govern the importation
of handguns!
A major share of the responsibility for this state of affairs
belongs to the draftsmen of section 925(d) and to Congress. The
"sporting purposes" test was ill-suited to the task of sorting out
foreign handguns, yet handgun imports were the only significant issue to
be decided by that standard. While the agency charged with
responsibility for administering the Act could have made a wholesale
determination that almost all handguns were barred from importation, a
clearer congressional mandate for such a controversial step would have
been desirable.
The jurisprudence of the entire "Saturday Night Special" issue is
also interesting. The attack against cheap imported handguns was
powerful but pitifully underinclusive. Handguns retailing for under $50
are a major public safety problem-but so are those retailing for over
$50. Imported handguns were an important part of the urban arms race of
the late 1960s, but so were domestic handguns.[170] To focus on "cheap
imports" created the need to find the kind of fault with these guns that
would not generalize too quickly. The various complaints lodged against
the "Saturday Night Special" were thus somewhat peripheral to the
central problems of handgun misuse¾[Page 167] and these distortions are
faithfully reflected in the standards governing handgun imports in 1974.
The effect of the import restriction on handgun importation was
immediate and dramatic, as shown in Table 3, using data from the Bureau
of the Census.
TABLE 3
HANDGUN IMPORTS BY YEAR, 1965-73
1964
253,000
1969
349,252
1965
346,906
1970
226,516
1966
513,019
1971
345,557
1967
747,013
1972
293,343
1968
1,155,368
1973
309,471
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Foreign Trade Division,
FT246¾U.S. Imports for Consumption 1964-73.
Handgun imports in 1969, the first year under the Gun Control Act,
were less than a third of 1968’s record volume of 1,155,000, and
importation in later years has never exceeded one third of the 1968
total. It is also significant that the post-1968 totals are far lower
than in 1967 and 1966, years when the number of handguns imported was
not affected by the deadline imposed by the Gun Control Act. These
figures show a linear growth in handgun imports being replaced in 1969
by a new plateau at about one third of the 1968 rate, a further dip in
1970, and a leveling off in later years at around 300,000 units.
The figures in Table 3 are from annual reports from the Bureau of
the Census on specific categories of foreign trade. The data are derived
from customs records and are the only estimates of imports available for
the years prior to 1969. Since December of 1968, however, A.T.F. has
been compiling its own figures on firearms importation, derived from
forms filed by holders of import licenses. A.T.F. statistics on handgun
imports tell a somewhat different story, as shown in Table 4.
The A.T.F. and Census figures are in general agreement for the
years 1969-1971, showing a sustained drop in handgun imports. The A.T.F.
statistics for these years are always somewhat higher than the Census
figures, because the A.T.F. definition of a handgun includes certain
handgun parts and marginal weapons that the Census figures exclude. For
1972, however, the A.T.F. and Census imports diverge by 150,000 guns,
and the 1973 totals of 300,000 and 900,000 respectively cannot be
reconciled.[171] If the A.T.F. [Page 168]
TABLE 4
HANDGUN IMPORTS BY YEAR, 1964-73
Bureau of the Census
A.T.F.
1964
253,000
¾
1965
346,906
¾
1966
513,019
¾
1967
747,013
¾
1968
1,155,368
¾
1969
349,252
358,083a
1970
226,516
279,537
1971
345,557
357,170
1972
293,343
439,883
1973
309,471
900,680
a Estimate based on a thirteen-month total of 387,924.
Source: U.S. Dep't of Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms, Statistics Division.
figures are closer to the truth, the pattern of handgun imports
shows a sustained drop followed by a sharp increase in 1972 and 1973,
with the 1973 total approaching the 1968 peak. With no definitive basis
for choosing between these sharply different estimates, each of which
claims to be based on compilations from individual records of handgun
transactions, we will simply have to plead in the alternative whenever
handgun import statistics for these years are needed to assess the
impact of the Act. One could hope, however, that the two federal
agencies in charge of compiling these data might attempt to resolve such
a glaring discrepancy.
Unless imported handguns are a distinctive social control problem,
the appropriate way to measure the impact of the ban on imports is the
number and type of handguns, both domestic and imported, coming to the
civilian United States market. In order to acquire these data, it is
necessary to study patterns of domestic handgun production. One would
predict that a partial ban on imports would lead domestic manufacturers
to produce more weapons. This prediction is supported by the statistics
compiled in Table 5.
Table 6 shows the estimated total number of handguns introduced
into the civilian market during 1963 through 1973; the disagreement on
imports makes it necessary to, present both "low" (using Census
statistics) and "high" (using A.T.F. statistics) estimates for 1969-1973.
Annual handgun production and imports in the first three years
after passage of the Act were off more than 25 per cent from the 1968
peak-year total¾and approximately the same as in 1967. After that the
"high" and "low" total estimates tell different stories. If the "low"
estimate is accurate, an expansion in domestic production in 1972 and
1973 pushed the total number of handguns to nearly the two million mark,
a unit volume 400,000 below the 1968 total. If the "high" estimate is
accurate, increases in both [Page 169]
TABLE 5
ESTIMATED DOMESTIC PRODUCTION OF HANDGUNS FOR CIVILIAN USE
BY YEAR, 1964-73
1964
491,073a
1969
1,367,300c
1965
666,394a
1970
1,393,690d
1966
699,798a
1971
1,420,692e
1967
926,404a
1972
1,667,000f
1968
1,259,356b
1973
1,609,000g
a Estimate based on production reported by manufacturers to the
National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. See George
D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, Firearms and Violence in American Life
172 (1963).
b Estimate projected from production for the first six months of
1968. Ibid.
c Estimate based on handgun excise tax collections of $6,183,000
for fiscal 1969, and $6,697,000 for fiscal 1970, and ratios of $4.34
excise tax collection per handgun in fiscal 1971. The mean ratio of
excise tax collection to guns ($4.71) was divided into the mean of
excise tax collections for fiscal 1969 and fiscal 1970 ($6,440,000) to
derive an estimated calendar-year production of 1,367,304 handguns.
Fiscal-year estimates of handgun production for 1968 and 1971 were
derived from the mean of production for the two calendar years that were
pertinent. Our estimate of production deviated from that of the Treasury
(which simply divided total production for 1967, 1968, 1970 and 1971 by
four) by a total of 112,000 handguns, or nine per cent.
d Estimate based on A.T.F. survey of domestic manufacturers.
e Estimate based on A.T.F. survey of "confidential industry sources."
f Estimate based on A.T.F. survey for first six months, quarterly
reports to A.T.F. for July-December. Handgun exports deleted.
g Estimate based on quarterly report by manufacturers to A.T.F.
production and imports pushed unit volume above two million in 1972
and above the 1968 peak in 1973.
While the peak rate of 1968 may not be an ideal candidate for a
base year, the figures in Table 6 suggest that the new import
restrictions did have an immediate and substantial impact on the number
of handguns that came into the civilian market; as might have been
expected, however, domestic production expanded after the Act, and the
increase in domestic capacity was equal by 1973 to about half the
1,100,000 handguns that were imported in 1968.
TABLE 6
HANDGUN PRODUCTION AND IMPORTS BY YEAR, U.S., 1964-73
(in thousands)
Low Estimate
High Estimate
1964
744
¾
1965
1002
¾
1966
1213
¾
1967
1673
¾
1968
2414
¾
1969
1716
1725
1970
1619
1672
1971
1765
1777
1972
1960
2100
1973
1918
2510
[Page 170]
In part, the expanded domestic output reflected the production of
domestic "Saturday Night Specials." The importation of handgun parts for
United States assembly grew from a unit volume of 18,000 in 1968 to more
than a million in 1972.[172] The average value of a United States
handgun (as indicated by, the ratio of production to excise tax
collections) fell by about 10 per cent between 1969 and 1972, during a
period of general inflation.[173] Yet the impact of the importation
restrictions was substantial in the years immediately following the Act
and could have been even more substantial if a tighter definition of
"sporting purposes" and restrictions on the importation of handgun parts
had materialized.
There are two ways of measuring the impact of restricted supplies
of handguns on the rate of handgun violence. The first is to compare the
rate of civilian handgun acquisition with rates of handgun violence; the
second is to trend the proportion of violent activities attributable to
handguns over time. The first method is the most frequently used, but
fails to control for the many variables other than gun availability that
may influence the rate at which crimes are committed with all weapons,
including guns. The second method seeks to control for other factors
influencing crime rates by focusing on relative rather than absolute
measures of gun use. Both approaches show the same general pattern for
the period 1966 through 1973¾explosive growth in the rate of handgun
usage in the period 1966-1969 followed by three years in which handgun
violence continued to grow, but at a more modest rate.
Figure 1 shows trends in handgun homicide and nonfatal assault by
firearms in the 57 largest United States cities. The assault figures,
which are not broken down by type of firearm, should be composed of
about 80 per cent handgun attacks, since 79 per cent of all firearms
homicides during the period were committed with handguns in these cities.
Handgun homicides and gun assaults increase consistently throughout
the period, but the rate of increase slows considerably after 1969.
Assuming about a one-year lead time for guns produced or imported to
reach city streets, the moderating rate of increase coincides with the
reduction in new handguns entering the civilian market.
Figure 2 shows handgun homicides and firearm assaults as a
percentage of all homicides and assaults, for the same cities.
Figure 2 reveals substantial increases in the percentage of
homicides attributed to handguns and assaults attributed to firearms;
these moderated beginning in 1969, but continued to trend upward. If, as
seems likely, these percentages are related to the rate at which
handguns enter the civilian [Page 171]
FIGURE 1
TRENDS IN HANDGUN HOMICIDES AND FIREARMS ASSAULTS, 57 CITIES WITH
POPULATION 250,000 OR MORE, BY YEAR 1966-1973
market, both handgun attacks and the percentage of all attacks
attributable to handguns should show further upward movement in 1974,
particularly if the A.T.F. estimate of imports (the high estimate in
Table 6) is the more accurate.
In part because of the import restrictions and their aftermath, the
"Saturday Night Special" issue became the focal point for
firearms-control debate in the early 1970s. Using the uneasy conceptual
framework of section 925(d)(3) as a starting point, proposals to extend
production controls to domestic handguns proceeded in three different
directions. One set of proposals, never widely supported in Congress,
used the artificiality of the distinction between "Saturday Night
Specials" and other handguns as a platform for urging prohibition of
handgun production and sale for the civilian market.[174] A second
approach [Page 172]
FIGURE 2
HANDGUN HOMICIDE AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL HOMICIDE, AND FIREARM
ASSAULT AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL ASSAULT, BY YEAR IN 57 U.S. CITIES OVER
250,000
was Senator Bayh’s proposal to extend the existing A.T.F. minimum
standards of length and quality to domestically produced handguns; his
bill, S. 2507, would have prevented the sale of many handguns produced
by established United States firms that were smaller than the minimum
standards in the bill.[175] The Bayh bill passed the Senate in 1972 but
never came to the floor of the House.[176]
A third approach, which enjoyed considerable support in the
Congress and the Administration, sought to amend the "Factoring Criteria
for Weapons" into a test of handgun reliability and to extend this type
of regulation to both imported and domestic handguns. Federally funded
tests of handguns were performed by the H. B. White Laboratories in
1972, and there was talk of an Administration proposal to amend section
92 5 (d), but no such proposal [Page 173] was introduced.[177] A number
of proposals have been introduced in Congress and state legislatures
using criteria such as melting point or reliability test survival as
criteria for minimum handgun quality.[178]
Most of the descendants of section 925(d) suffer from the same
aroma of arbitrariness that surrounded the debate in 1968 and the
standards promulgated under the 1968 act. The Bayh bill used the
previously discussed "factoring criteria" developed to test foreign
handguns.[179] The bin seems to have been inspired by reports of
domestically produced "Saturday Night Specials," and the criteria and
cutoff points were borrowed from the A.T.F. import standards to avoid
the tricky problem of establishing and defending independent standards.
The various proposals to make handguns "reliable" oddly did not include
shotguns and rifles, as one would assume a genuine consumer-safety
proposal for firearms should. The special problems associated with
handgun possession and use have achieved a great deal of public
attention, but the second generation "Saturday Night Special" bills do
not address what appears to be the central problem: the misuse of
handguns, rather than of any recognizable subclass of handguns.
One lesson of the 1968 import restrictions is that a production
standard need not be conceptually acceptable to have impact on the
United States handgun market. Any standards that disrupt handgun,
production can have short-run effects, and any standards that raise
prices significantly or restrict production capacity can have some
long-range impact on handgun sales and use. The problem with this type
of partial solution is not merely that it has "loopholes" through which
compensating increases in production can flow: it also lacks coherent
principle. The mechanism used by section 925(d)(3)¾shutting off the flow
of a particular type of weapon¾might work with a relatively high degree
of effectiveness if only we could determine what it is that we really
want to prohibit.
The fluctuation in handgun violence over the past eight years also
suggests, for good or ill, that the rate at which new handguns enter the
market has a special impact on handgun violence. The 2.4 million new
handguns entering the market in 1968 were a less than 15 per cent
addition to the total domestic supply, yet were associated with a fax
larger increase in handgun homicides.[180] In part this "leverage" may
simply reflect the fact that the same forces that influence crime rates
increase the demand for handguns, in which case a legislated reduction
in handgun production and imports will not necessarily result in a
disproportionate reduction in handgun violence. [Page 174]
FIGURE 3
HANDGUNS CONFISCATED IN NEW YORK CITY DURING DECEMBER 1973 BY YEAR
OF ORIGINAL SALE
It is also true, however, that a large percentage of the handguns
used in big-city crime are new or near-new, as seen in Figure 3.
As Figure 3 shows, 19 per cent of the handguns confiscated by New
York City police in December 1973 and later traced by A.T.F. had been
shipped to dealers that same year. The next highest total was the 14 per
cent of all guns produced in 1972, and the pattern shows a steady
decline in percentage for prior years not accounted for by the
fluctuations in handgun production or imports.[181] If newer handguns
are more "at risk" than older handguns, the number of such guns shipped
in any year would be expected to have a more-than-proportional impact,
up or down, on trends in gun violence.
To the extent that restricting imports reduced the rate of handgun
acquisition, it may share some of the credit for moderating the upward
trend in handgun violence that preceded the Gun Control Act of 1968. But
there is not much credit to pass around, because the volume of handguns
coming to the civilian market has increased almost to, or beyond, the
1968 peak, and the same theory that would attribute some prevention of
handgun violence to the 1968 restrictions would predict further
increases in handgun violence. [Page 175]
C. State Aid and Migratory Handguns
A major aim of the Gun Control Act was to assist state and local
gun control efforts by reducing the flow of guns from loose-control to
tight-control jurisdictions. Prior to the Act, two northeastern states
and a number of municipalities had attempted to restrict handgun
possession to only those of their citizens who could demonstrate a
special need to own one.[182] Such laws were intended to reduce handgun
ownership to a tiny fraction of the national average of 40 handguns per
100 households. As it turned out, though, municipal efforts to restrict
handgun possession were vulnerable to the flow of handguns from within
the state and from other states, and state efforts were vulnerable to
interstate traffic.[183]
Whether state and local restrictive handgun licensing reduced rates
of criminal violence was widely debated. States and cities with such
licensing systems experienced lower rates of criminal homicide than some
other jurisdictions, and guns were used in a lower percentage of all
violent crime.[184] But the two major laboratories of restrictive
handgun licensing, New York and Massachusetts, were located in regions
with traditionally low rates of handgun ownership and were
demographically different from the areas to which they were compared by
advocates of handgun restrictions.[185]
It was not contested that a major problem in administering any gun
licensing system was the interstate "leakage" of guns. In the mid-1960s
it was estimated that 87 per cent of all firearms used in Massachusetts
crime had been purchased first in other states.[186] Two thirds of a
sample of handguns confiscated in New York City had come from other
states, and surveys in other cities with licensing systems told roughly
the same story.[187]
This part of the article addresses the impact of the Gun Control
Act on the interstate flow of handguns. Data are presented on handgun
crime in New York and Boston, two cities in which a reduction of
interstate handgun traffic should result in lower rates of handgun use.
A sample of handguns confiscated in New York City is then analyzed to
determine where handguns are coming from after the Act, and, to the
extent possible, how they are coming. A separate analysis is presented
of trends in gun and nongun crime in Washington, D.C., a restrictive
licensing jurisdiction where special enforcement efforts were initiated
by A.T.F. in 1970.[Page 176]
1. Measuring Interstate Gun Traffic: New York and Boston. If the
Gun Control Act and its enforcement has led to a reduction of interstate
firearms traffic, this reduction should be evident in New York City and
Boston, the principal cities in the two most restrictive handgun
licensing states in the United States, because out-of-state handguns are
a higher proportion of total handguns in these cities than in other
metropolitan areas.
One index of the relative number of handguns in circulation is the
number of violent crimes committed with handguns. Figure 4 shows the
number of handgun homicides reported by the police in New York and
Boston and handgun homicide trends for the 57-city sample analyzed in
Figure 1. Figure 5 reports parallel data for firearms assaults-the best
available measure of trends in handgun assaults.
The pattern in New York is clear: handgun homicides and firearm
assaults grew steadily through the period 1966-1972. In the period
1969-1972 both homicide by handgun (up to 87 per cent) and firearm
assaults (up to 70 percent) increased three times as much as the 57-city
averages (28 per cent for handgun homicide and 24 per cent for firearm
assaults). Even these inflated growth rates are somewhat smaller than
increases experienced during 1966-1969, so it is possible that some
reduction in interstate handgun traffic is concealed in the compound
growth of handgun violence in New York City.
The statistics from Boston show a less steady pattern, in part
because the number of crimes reported there are Only 5-10 per cent of
the New York City totals. During 1969-1971, handgun homicides and
firearm assaults increased more than the 57-city average. There was a
dip in 1972, followed by a large increase in 1973.
One needs a basis for comparison to determine whether the New York
and Boston data permit an inference that the Gun Control Act is reducing
interstate handgun traffic. One natural point of comparison is the
pattern of handgun violence in each city before the Act. By this
measure, both cities show increases in handgun violence, with a rate of
increase almost as great in the years after the Act as in the years
before. Another basis of comparison, used in Figures 4 and 5, is the
rate at which handgun violence was growing in other United States
cities. By this index, both cities show increases more pronounced than
the national urban pattern during 1969-1973. The pattern for all other
United States cities may not, however, be the appropriate basis for
comparison, inasmuch as both Boston and New York have traditionally had
lower rates of handgun violence than other urban areas, and the very
different baselines make trend comparisons misleading.
Another method of attempting to compare New York and Boston
patterns would be to find cities similar to them in respects other than
firearm policy. The only faintly reasonable match for New York City is
Philadelphia, which has a municipal handgun policy, dose to New York’s
but a more permissive state law. And there is no adequate comparison
city for Boston. [Page 177]
FIGURE 4
TRENDS IN HANDGUN HOMICIDES BY YEAR, NEW YORK CITY, BOSTON, AND
57-CITY AVERAGE
The New York-Philadelphia comparison is set out in Figures 6 and 7.
Between 1966 and 1969, New York experienced a larger increase in
handgun homicide than Philadelphia (151 per cent versus 79 per cent) and
a smaller relative increase in firearm assault (76 per cent versus 102
per cent). Between 1969 and 1972, the New York and Philadelphia patterns
of increase are quite similar: handgun homicide increased 87 per cent in
New York, compared to 81 per cent in Philadelphia; firearm assault
increased 70 per cent in New York, compared to 80 per cent in
Philadelphia. The similar trends suggest that the northeastern cities
with traditionally lower rates of [Page 178]
FIGURE 5
TRENDS IN FIREARM ASSAULTS BY YEAR, NEW YORK CITY, BOSTON, AND
57-CITY AVERAGE
handgun ownership and use were more vulnerable to large percentage
jumps in gun violence during the past few years. The similar post-Act
patterns in New York and Philadelphia cannot be read as evidence that
interstate handgun traffic (more important in New York violence)[188]
varied more significantly than other gun traffic, unless one supposes
that the higher pre-Act increases in New York City handgun homicide
indicate that the New York post-Act totals would have been higher still
in the absence of legislation,
A further way to control for factors other than handgun supply that
condition rates of violence is to compare trends in gun versus nongun
crime in the cities being studied. Factors other than gun supply are
assumed to affect both types of crime in a similar manner. Increased or
decreased handgun [Page 179]
FIGURE 6
TRENDS IN HANDGUN HOMICIDES BY YEAR, NEW YORK CITY AND PHILADELPHIA
traffic is assumed to influence gun crime only. The percentage of
crimes involving guns is a shorthand expression of trends in gun crime
controlled for variations in nongun crime.
Figures 8 and 9 trend the use of handguns in homicide (Figure 8)
and assault (Figure 9) for New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.
All of the individual cities in Figures 8 and 9 begin with a
smaller share of homicides and assaults committed with handguns than the
national urban average. Both the rate of handgun violence and the
proportion of violence attributable to handguns increased more
dramatically in all three cities than the national urban average. And
finally while the rate of increase in the per- [Page 180]
FIGURE 7
TRENDS IN FIREARMS ASSAULTS, BY YEAR, NEW YORK CITY AND PHILADELPHIA
centage of homicides committed by handguns slows a bit in New York,
the data do not support an inference that the upward trend in handgun
use stabilized after the Act.
If the "new guns" hypothesis advanced earlier[189]¾that the rate at
which handguns are introduced into an area is disproportionately
reflected in rates of handgun violence¾is correct, the data suggest that
the Gun Control Act of 1968 did not result in a palpable disruption of
interstate handgun traffic.
An A.T.F. analysis of handguns confiscated by the New York City
police provides support for this conclusion, as well as a partial
explanation of why [Page 181]
FIGURE 8
HANDGUN HOMICIDE AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL HOMICIDE BY YEAR,
NEW YORK CITY, PHILADELPHIA, AND BOSTON
the Act itself had no major depressant impact on interstate handgun
migration. In 1973 A.T.F. traced a sample of handguns used in crime in
Atlanta, New York, Detroit, and New Orleans. Table 7 shows where the
handguns confiscated in New York were originally sold by dealers.
TABLE 7
PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF NEW YORK HANDGUNS
BY STATE OF ORIGINAL SALE
South Carolina
24
%
Florida
13
Georgia
11
Virginia
8
New York
5
All Others
39
100
% (2048)
Source: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Project I (1974),
at 8.
[Page 182]
FIGURE 9
FIREARM ASSAULT AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL ASSAULT,
NEW YORK CITY, PHILADELPHIA, AND BOSTON
Only five per cent of the handguns traced to retail transactions
were originally sold in the State of New York. Over half of all the
handguns traced came from dealers in four southeastern states with high
handgun populations and few controls on handgun sales. Thirty-nine per
cent of the guns came from the other 45 states. The concentration of
handgun traffic in a few noncontiguous states and the fact that most
handguns are sold at retail in these states suggest that traffic in
handguns is organized and that retail dealers are, with or without their
knowledge, the prime source of supply.
Table 8 shows the distribution of a sample of New York City
handguns by year of original retail sale.
More than half of the guns traced were sold at retail in the five
years after the effective date of the Gun Control Act.
The A.T.F. studies have not yet traced guns in other restrictive
licensing cities or attempted to show how handguns migrate from
southeastern dealers [Page 183]
TABLE 8
HANDGUNS CONFISCATED IN NEW YORK CITY DURING DECEMBER OF 1973 BY
YEAR OF ORIGINAL SALE
Pre-1945
14
%
1946-60
8
1961-65
7
1966-68
15
Total Pre-Act .........................................
44%
1969
6
1970
8
1971
11
1972
14
1973
19
Total Post-Act ........................................
56a
100%
(1336)
a Year totals add to 58% because of rounding.
Source: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
to northeastern city streets in typical cases. One series of A.T.F.
criminal investigations involving South Carolina dealers suggested that
large-scale dealer transfers¾involving more than 1000 handguns during
the period of investigation¾are an important source of New York City
street weapons.[190] In almost all of these large-scale transactions the
federally licensed dealer is a culpable party. In most of the large
transactions the handguns were sold to South Carolina or North Carolina
residents and apparently shipped in bulk for street sales in northern
cities.[191] Smaller-scale transactions¾from 10 to 100 handguns¾involve
New York City residents coming south to purchase handguns for a return
trip, and southerners buying guns for personal transport north, by means
as mundane as Greyhound bus.[192]
If the pattern reflected in these selected cases holds true for
most New York City handguns, the major mechanism for interstate
transportation of handguns is the large transaction, requiring dealer
participation, financing and a distribution network in urban markets.
There is danger, however, in drawing this inference from so small a
sample of cases subjected to criminal investigation. A.T.F. criminal
enforcement efforts are, rightly, concentrated on high-volume cases.
With very scarce resources and a huge gun commerce to investigate, the
sample of cases dealt with could be profoundly biased, and a large
number of smaller transactions could account for a majority of
interstate handgun traffic. The only way to determine the nature of
interstate traffic is the detailed tracing of representative samples of
urban handguns. [Page 184]
Yet the data already presented on gun crime and gun traffic do
permit a preliminary interpretation of the impact of the Act on
interstate handgun traffic. The rate of handgun crime and the proportion
of attacks involving handguns have continued to increase in
tight-control cities without significant interruption. The handguns are
relatively new and come from a cluster of loose-control states. It
appears that handguns are coming from the same places by the same means
as before the Act. Otherwise one would expect to see a dip, followed by
a recovery, in the rate at which handguns entered urban areas.
In this connection it is important to recall that the Gun Control
Act requires records covering only the transfer from dealer to first
customer. While it can be argued that any customer who buys thirty
handguns is presumably himself a dealer, federal law does not require
the dealer to notify A.T.F. of this type of transaction. If the multiple
handgun buyer uses his own name, he is in jeopardy if an audit of dealer
records happens to focus attention on his purchase; if the customer uses
an intermediary who cannot identify him, or gives false identification,
the trail of federal records immediately grows cold. The interstate
transportation of guns for resale in violation of local law is a crime
under the 1968 Act, as it was under the 1938 Act. But finding the
offender requires a heavy investment of manpower¾to audit firearm
transaction records and to discover and arrest illegal sellers,
principally through undercover work.
As previously noted, the manpower available for enforcing the Act
has always been modest, and it is not possible to determine the
proportion of A.T.F. effort devoted to suppressing interstate handgun
traffic. There are thus at least two plausible explanations for the
apparent failure of the Act to significantly diminish handgun migration:
lack of enforcement effort and the inherent difficulty of erecting
barriers between states with unlimited handgun access and those that
seek to restrict handgun availability. To the extent that further
manpower can produce some restraint on the interstate traffic in
handguns, the state-aid approach of the Gun Control Act is not
inherently unsound; to the extent that loose-control states and
federally financed highways make state efforts at gun control depend on
the control efforts of other states, the 1968 Act can never be expected
to achieve its purpose.
2. Operation D.C. One method of testing the relative impact of
enforcement effort is to invest a larger-than-usual amount of resources
in a single jurisdiction and to determine the consequences of this
investment on rates of handgun crime. One such experiment has been
conducted by A.T.F. in a city that attempts restrictive handgun
licensing and has suffered from the migration of handguns from other
states. Called "Operation Disarm the Criminal," this experiment was
conducted in the District of Columbia during the first six months of
1970. The District is an admirable candidate for test- [Page 185] ing
efforts to restrict interstate handgun flow because it is a
tight-handgun-control jurisdiction, bordering on two states with more
lenient handgun policies. In January 1970 the A.T.F. enforcement staff
in the District was increased from about seven special agents to between
35 and 50 special agents.[193] This abnormally high manpower allocation
was maintained for only six months and fell back to about 20 when the
Internal Revenue Service declined to provide funds for a one-year
extension of the project. The enforcement effort, at a ratio of one
agent to about 2000 population, was about ten times greater than A.T.F.
manpower in other major cities.[194]
The special agents assigned to Operation D.C. contacted dealers in
the District and proximate areas in Maryland and Virginia that were the
major source of handgun supply to Washington. But the principal
occupation of these agents was "street work"¾undercover investigations,
efforts to purchase guns from illegal sellers, and attempts to perfect
federal gun law charges against persons whom the local police nominated
as being particularly troublesome.
Any attempt to measure the consequences of this effort runs into a
number of obstacles. Operation D.C. was identified as a candidate for
study long after its conclusion, and the historical records are
incomplete. The experiment lasted only six months, which means that any
impact on handgun migration attributable to the effort would probably be
short-lived. And because the best measures of trends in gun migration
are crime statistics, short-term changes in the flow of handguns might
not result in discernible differences. Further, this was one of many
simultaneous crime-control efforts occurring in the District, and care
must be taken to avoid crediting the operation with results that justly
should be attributed to other variables. Also, the rate of handgun
violence had increased rapidly prior to 1970, and there is danger that
regression from abnormally high prior levels of handgun violence might
be misread as evidence of enforcement impact.
There are a number of ways in which the special enforcement efforts
of Operation D.C. might have reduced the migration of handguns into the
District of Columbia and the supply of such weapons available in the
District. First, enforcement activities result in the confiscation of
weapons, which are thereafter unavailable for sale or criminal use.
Project records indicate that just over 575 weapons were confiscated or
purchased during the six months the operation was near full strength, an
average of about 30 guns per agent [Page 186] man-year, and a total too
small to generate hope that this process alone had a measurable impact
on rate of gun violence. However, the operation also involved efforts to
persuade gun dealers in nearby out-of-state counties to monitor their
customers more carefully.[195] While data on handgun sales by these
dealers are not available, it is possible that the influx of weapons
into the District was substantially reduced. The enforcement effort
might also have disrupted the sale of weapons within the District by
deterring or apprehending illegal firearms sellers. The project reported
a total of 159 criminal cases initiated but did not estimate how many of
the subjects apprehended were involved in large-scale commerce in
weapons.[196]
The most straightforward method of testing the manifold effects of
special firearms enforcement efforts is to examine trends in gun crime
within the District, on the assumption that a substantial reduction in
the number of handguns entering the District would result in a lower
number of gun crimes than would otherwise be expected, Figure 10 shows
trends in handgun and all other homicide in the District of Columbia by
year for the period 1966-1973.
FIGURE 10
GUN AND NONGUN HOMICIDES BY YEAR, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1966-1971
[Page 187]
As Figure 10 shows, both gun and nongun homicide declined in 1970,
but the rate of gun killings did not decline disproportionately. With
the cooperation of the Washington D.C. police, we obtained a monthly
breakdown of gun and nongun homicides from 1966 through December
1971.[197] These supplementary data were acquired because the intensive
enforcement was of short duration, and monthly data would allow the use
of interrupted time-series analysis. Figure 11 shows the monthly
patterns of gun and nongun homicide.
FIGURE 11
GUN AND NONGUN HOMICIDE BY MONTH, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1966-1971
What appears visually is a drop in gun homicides in the middle
months of 1970 that is not present in the nongun pattern. The
interrupted time-series analysis indicates that gun killings decreased
substantially during the enforcement effort while nongun killings did
not. The time series of nongun killings reveals no significant change in
the rate or trend in homicides.[198] Gun homicides, using February 1970
as the first month in which an effect would be [Page 188]
FIGURE 12
NONGUN HOMICIDES BY MONTH, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1966-1971
expected, decline in subsequent months.[199] While the program used
for the analysis is not well suited to studying the impact of
enforcement efforts, the results in this case suggest some short-term
enforcement effect and this suggestion is confirmed by use of a second
program more suited to studying enforcement effect.[200]
The data on aggravated assault tell a different story. Monthly
assault data were not available covering months prior to 1969. Figure 14
provides yearly data on Washington assaults since 1966, and Figure 15
gives quarterly data for assaults from 1969 through 1973.
Gun assaults do not decline, while nongun assaults fluctuate in a
pattern [Page 189]
FIGURE 13
GUN HOMICIDES BY MONTH, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1966-1971
FIGURE 14
GUN AND NONGUN ASSAULTS BY YEAR, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1966-1973
[Page 190]
FIGURE 15
GUN AND NONGUN ASSAULTS BY QUARTER, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1969-1972
unrelated to enforcement. On a yearly basis the flat 1970
performance appears encouraging, since gun assaults had been, increasing
steadily prior to 1970. However, with insufficient data to perform a
time-series analysis and with no dip in the level of gun assaults
similar to the mid-1970 dip in gun killings, the assault data do not
support the hypothesis that Operation D.C. substantially affected the
migration of handguns into the District of Columbia.
Taken as a whole, the data on Operation D.C. suggest that special
enforcement efforts might produce measurable impact on gun crime. But
the undramatic data on assaults and the brevity of the experiment leave
uncomfortably ample room for debate on whether such an exercise-can
produce results worth its costs. [Page 191]
In sum, on the available data, the Gun Control Act has not produced
any measurable change in the migration of handguns from loose-control to
tight-control jurisdictions. It appears that the interstate movement of
handguns into tight-control areas was not interrupted by the Act because
the 1968 scheme of records and regulation did not inhibit large-scale
purchases from dealers in loose-control jurisdictions for interstate
transportation to northeastern city streets. A.T.F.’s single experiment
with concentrated enforcement produced suggestive but not conclusive
evidence of impact. It is unknown to what extent the difficulty of the
task as opposed to the absence of sufficient manpower is the explanation
for the lack of measurable impact of the Act on interstate handgun
migration.
It is also difficult to speak with confidence of the inherent
difficulties of the Act’s state-aid approach because many remediable
difficulties have hampered the enforcement of the "state-aid" sections
of the Act. Thus far, A.T.F. has been operating with (1) an insufficient
information base for allocating enforcement resources, (2) lack of
coordination between regulatory and criminal enforcement efforts, (3)
regulations that fall far short of the power delegated by the Act to
suppress interstate handgun migration, and (4) a manpower-allocation
policy that spreads a thin coat of inadequate resources nationwide. Each
of these problems deserves further elaboration.
Although some progress has been made during the past year, A.T.F.
still lacks much of the information it needs to plan enforcement policy,
and allocate criminal enforcement resources, rationally. Before mid-1972
the Bureau did not require any information from manufacturers on the
number of guns they produced. At present, this information is collected
on a quarterly basis, but no data are available on the number of
firearms sold in specific regions, either at retail or wholesale, and
there is no way that regulatory manpower can be allocated according to
variations in patterns of firearm traffic. Lack of basic data has also
hampered criminal enforcement efforts. High or disproportionate volume
of handgun sales in a particular state is a dear indication that, the
state is a launching pad for interstate handguns. Data on handgun sales
could also prove useful in monitoring changes in points of origin for
guns transported in violation of the Act. Criminal enforcement efforts
have also been hampered by lack of information on who is transporting
handguns in violation of the Act and how the guns get from loose-control
to tight-control states. Project "I" is the Bureau’s first venture
toward gathering these necessary data, but that operation has not yet
traced a representative sample of handguns confiscated in tight-control
cities beyond the point of first retail sale.[201] [Page 192]
Related to insufficient data is the apparent lack of coordination
between the regulatory and criminal enforcement segments of
administration of the Act. Even though much of the regulatory work
required under the Act has been performed by Special Agents with arrest
powers, there has not been sufficient use of regulatory powers to
facilitate criminal enforcement ends. Millions of forms giving details
of gun transactions lie fallow in dealer record books. The decentralized
nature of these records and limited manpower make a complete audit of
these transfer records impossible. Yet a careful sampling of regulatory
enforcement records can show what types of transactions, customers, and
locations are most closely associated with criminal violations of the Act.
An example of the use of regulatory data to set both regulatory and
criminal enforcement priorities comes from an analysis we conducted of
100 dealer-compliance investigations in the Chicago district office of
A.T.F. As part of the compliance investigation, records of individual
transactions were selected by the inspector and verified as to the
purchaser’s address and criminal record. Some transactions are chosen by
the inspector at random, some are chosen because the purchaser’s address
appeared to be in a high-crime area, and some because more than one gun
was purchased. A number of analyses can be performed with this sample of
purchase records. Table 9 shows the percentage of apparent violations of
the Act found in the audit.
More than half of all multiple firearm purchases involving handguns
appeared to violate the Act, compared with a one-per cent estimated
violation rate of transactions selected at random. From all appearances,
regulatory audits should concentrate on multiple handgun transactions,
and the criminal enforcement branch has a special stake in acquiring
information on the number and pattern of such transactions.
This is only one example of how coordinated sampling of firearms trans-
TABLE 9
RATES OF APPARENT LAW VIOLATION
Reason for Verification
At Random
High-Crime
Area
Multiple
Weapons
Total
Firearm(s) Purchased
Handguns
2%
7%
58%
10%a (N = 370)
All Others
0
2%
0
1%a (N = 141)
1%
7%
50%
(N = 184)
(N = 287)
(N = 24)
551
a Includes 15 cases that could not be classified.
Source: U.S. Treasury Dep't, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms Records.
[Page 193]
actions can aid in isolating enforcement priorities and in
producing data on the extent to which the law is being observed. The
regulatory branch could also follow up on transactions in a sample of
cases to see how many guns in particular areas are no longer traceable
to a local owner after one year. The criminal enforcement unit could
trace confiscated big-city handguns from first purchasers as far forward
in the chain of commerce as is possible. This would provide information
on how interstate movement occurs and suggest ways in which the
record-keeping and information systems presently used might be altered
to depress the present rate of interstate handgun migration.
It is true that the decentralized nature of transaction information
makes the gathering of intelligence both difficult and expensive. But
much of the problem could be solved by new regulations within the powers
granted under the Act. Requiring dealers to keep records of sales by
type of gun is a normal and far from onerous duty of a federally
licensed business. Requiring dealers to notify A.T.F. of multiple retail
handgun sales is justified, either because of the high risk that the
recipient is acting as an unlicensed dealer or because such guns are
more frequently shipped out of state in violation of the Act.[202] A
requirement that dealers verify local residence beyond inspecting
identification documents would be a harder issue under the Act but could
be defended on a variety of grounds.
To criticize A.T.F. for spreading its manpower too thinly is
something of a shot in the dark, if only because the Bureau does not
have the information on which such a judgment can be based. It is known
that "state aid" was a high priority of the 1968 Act, and it is likely
that far fewer than 30 per cent of all prosecutions under the Act
concern interstate shipment of handguns and long guns. The total agent
staff in New York City was estimated at 63 last year, which appears low
in relation to New York City’s dominant role as a receiver of interstate
handguns. But without knowing where guns are sold, how they come to
tight-control states, and how effective various strategies are in
reducing interstate flow, it is difficult to criticize a pattern of
manpower allocation; it is equally difficult to formulate a rational
allocation without such data.
With respect to the state-aid alms of the Gun Control Act, it is
not possible to determine whether interstate migration of guns continues
because the approach of the Act is hopeless or whether lack of strategic
intelligence and enforcement manpower are a major source of the
difficulty. There is every indication that we had better find out soon.
Political support for a more extensive federal role in firearms
regulation is difficult to measure or predict. [Page 194]
But changes in federal law, if they occur, will either take the
form of attempts to strengthen the present state-aid system or will
scrap the approach in favor of a national control system, either
licensing owners or limiting production. It would thus seem appropriate
to test the preventive potential of intensive enforcement of the ban on
migratory weapons.
At the same time, a nationwide expansion of enforcement large
enough to test the impact of manpower would be expensive and impractical
in the near future. A.T.F. has a limited number of special agents and
the lead time necessary to train more agents is substantial. Further,
the type of federal police work necessary for the detection of
black-market firearms sales has a high component of "street work"¾and a
large expansion of this element of the Bureau’s work raises the specter
of a national police force. More likely, any attempt to spread an
increase in enforcement power over too wide an area would result in
insignificant increases in the Bureau’s ability to enforce the law.
The appropriate next step is a sustained effort to increase
enforcement in one or two major tight-control jurisdictions. Depending
on available resources and police cooperation, Washington, Boston, or
New York would seem to be admirable candidates for such a study. The
data from the New York handgun analysis by Project I would implicate
South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida as sending areas worthy of
special enforcement and regulatory efforts. A fair test would involve a
tripling of enforcement and regulatory manpower over at least a two-year
period.
These comments are based in the premise that the state-aid sections
of the Gun Control Act were intended as a mechanism to reduce the flow
of firearms into states and cities attempting to restrict gun ownership.
It is, of course, possible that Congress did not place a high priority
on that aim but adopted state aid as an ideological compromise. If so,
the compromise may have worked admirably without any sign of reductions
in firearms violence and the administration of the Act by A.T.F. has
been, if anything, too energetic.
IV. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
The present study was intended both as an investigation of the
impact of a single piece of legislation and as an attempt to gain
perspective on larger issues relating to guns, gun controls, and the
legislative process. This section addresses a few of these larger
issues. In doing so, I will often venture opinions that are not
rigorously supported by existing data.
Without doubt, the role of firearms in American violence is much
greater in 1975 than in 1968. Rates of gun violence and the proportion
of violent acts that are committed by guns have increased substantially
since the Gun Control Act went into effect. Behind these increases lies
the probability that [Page 195] handgun ownership has become at least a
subcultural institution in the big cities which are the main arena of
American violence. During this period, regional differences in gun
ownership and use have been moderated as the large northeastern cities
that were traditionally areas of low ownership and use have experienced
large increases in handgun use.
The special role of the handgun in urban violence is one of the
more obvious lessons of the data we have assembled. For many purposes it
seems more appropriate to divide recent fluctuations in homicide and
assault into "handgun" and "other" categories than to speak of homicide
rates as an aggregate¾since 1966, rates of handgun homicide have
increased more than three times as much as homicides by all other means.
The data gathered in the present effort suggest, but do not compel,
two other conclusions about patterns of handgun ownership and violence
in the United States. First, the sharp rise in the proportion of
violence attributable to handguns in northeastern cities may lead to
modification of the hypothesis that general patterns of handgun
ownership determine the extent to which handguns are used in violent
episodes. While it is still true that those regions with the highest
general levels of gun ownership have the highest proportion of gun use
in violence, the past decade has produced an increase in handgun use in
the Northeast that leaves cities in that region closer to but still
below the national average handgun share of violence. This could be due
to a substantial rise in handgun ownership in the general population in
these cities, but that would mean that a vast northeastern urban handgun
arsenal has been accumulating during the past ten years. It is more
likely that handgun ownership increased substantially among subcultural
groups disproportionately associated with violence without necessarily
affecting other parts of the population. It is, to give a concrete
example, neither necessary nor likely that gun ownership among
middle-class New York Jews (other than small merchants) has increased
dramatically in the past decade as New York handgun homicide has increased.
If one adopts a "subcultural" explanation of the relationship
between gun ownership and violence, hypotheses about the effect of
increases or decreases in handgun ownership on handgun violence should
take a slightly more complicated form. One would predict that high
levels of handgun ownership produce high levels of handgun violence for
two reasons: more handguns are available at a moment of perceived need
and high ownership rates necessarily suggest high levels of handgun
availability to all potential consumers. Low general levels of handgun
ownership, on the other hand, become the necessary but not sufficient
condition of low levels of handgun violence. If the lower-than-average
general ownership levels are still high enough to create relatively easy
handgun availability, and if both handgun ownership and propensity for
violence are concentrated in discrete subpopulations, lower-than-average
gen- [Page 196] eral ownership is an inadequate insurance policy against
increases in handgun violence. It is only when ownership levels are low
enough to have an impact on handgun availability that low aggregate
ownership will depress handgun involvement in rates of subcultural violence.
A second tentative implication of this study¾somewhat more directly
inferred from the data¾is the so-called "new guns" hypothesis discussed
earlier. For reasons that have not yet been adequately explored, new
handguns are involved in crime at higher rates than older handguns. This
may be of importance in designing firearms control strategies and also
suggests need for further refining hypotheses about the relationship
between general levels of handgun ownership and the rate of handgun use
in crime. In urban settings where new handguns are available these guns
are purchased by persons who plan to use them. Older handguns include a
large number that are packed away in attics or kept in homes for
self-protection. Such weapons show up in crimes or confiscations only if
used by their owners or transferred by sale or theft to other
individuals. One would thus expect a smaller proportion of older guns to
be confiscated. As long as the chances of transfer are relatively small,
each new handgun will have much more impact on handgun availability than
each older gun owned by the civilian population. As long as the average
person who wants to buy a handgun this month is more likely to misuse it
than the average person who already owns one, handgun availability will
have more impact on trends in violence than handgun ownership.
What have we learned about the role of the federal government in
gun control? The data presented in these pages cannot show that a
particular strategy of firearms control is appropriate for the future,
for that is an issue that requires value determinations as well as
empirical data. The data do suggest, however, that any further
initiatives in gun control should be focused on handguns. There is also,
in the history of the administration of the Act, an intriguing contrast
between what I would call "gatekeeping" and policing strategies of
federal control. Whatever went wrong with the prohibition on imported
."Saturday Night Specials," enforcing the ban was clean white-collar
work of a type normally undertaken by federal regulatory agencies.
Attempts to keep handguns away from criminals and outside the borders of
tight-control jurisdictions require more police work. In this effort the
role of A.T.F. is best compared with the narcotics enforcement efforts
of the federal government.
Efforts to limit handgun supply on a national basis, by limiting
legitimate production, or imports, or both, will not require a large
federal street police force. At the point when market controls make
illicit gun production profitable, some police work will obviously be
needed, along the lines of controls on illicit. liquor production.
Any federal control strategy that seeks to regulate firearms
possession with- [Page 197] out regulating production and imports
requires more policing, both because the number of guns will remain
large and because keeping guns out of the hands of subclasses of the
population is extraordinarily difficult when guns are freely available
to others.
There is, however, one important difference between the criminal
enforcement of federal narcotics laws and present federal gun laws:
virtually all guns that come into illegitimate hands come from the
legitimate market. For this reason, records kept by dealers may provide
criminal enforcement agents with an information base that is not present
in narcotics control. But as long as transaction records are
decentralized and limited to first purchases, this advantage is of
limited importance.
Data from the first five years after the Gun Control Act are a poor
source of information on the consequences of handgun scarcity, because
handguns have not been scarce. Thus, the extent to which handgun use
would be replaced by long guns and the use of "homemade" weapons in
crime cannot be tested by examining the impact of the 1968 Act. It is
also important to note that the relatively small proportion of violence
attributed to older handguns in New York City does not mean that older
guns will not be a more serious problem if the flow of new handguns is
interrupted. If production and imports are interrupted, the primary
source of handguns would be the existing civilian inventory. The
pressure to acquire guns would drive up the price of older guns,
creating incentives for both owners and prospective burglars that
increase the chances that old handguns will be transferred to new
owners. Again, however, experience since 1968 gives no basis on which to
estimate the extent or consequences of this tendency.
Thus, studying the impact of the Gun Control Act gives only limited
insight into the consequences of more restrictive federal gun control
policies. I am also convinced that the legislative history of both the
1969 and 1938 Acts tell us little about the shape of future federal gun
control efforts. It is possible (vide the Federal Firearms Act of 1938)
that the Gun Control Act of 1968 will be controlling federal law into
the next century. But political sentiments about firearms control may
prove more fluid than some commentators believe. It is only if the
firearms issue remains as unimportant as it has been to date that one
can predict future legislative behavior from prior congressional action.
Whatever the future holds, the federal Congress is unprepared to
make intelligent policy choices concerning the federal role in firearms
regulation. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, with all its
faults, has an informational monopoly on firearms regulation. No
committee of the Congress has paid sustained attention to the
administration of the Act, or prodded the Bureau toward producing the
kind of information that is needed for intelligent planning. With
sporadic exceptions, those members of Congress [Page 198] that introduce
new firearms proposals are failing to obtain or use available
information. In the near future any real reform in the administration of
the Act will have to be internally generated by the Bureau. If Congress
is supposed to be the policy-setting institution, the Gun Control Act of
1968 may stand as an example of the blind leading the halt.
* Professor of Law, and Co-Director of the Center for Studies in
Criminal justice, University of Chicago. The research reported in this
article was supported by a grant from the Law and Social Science Program
of the National Science Foundation, GS 38285. Data for the study were
provided by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the
Uniform Crime Reporting Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(F.B.I.), and the Washington, D.C. Police Department. Without such
cooperation the study could not have gone forward. Virginia Cook
Aronson, Nathan Dardick, Marlene Dubas, Stanley Grimm, Theodore Hirt,
and Barry Howard¾all present or former University of Chicago law
students¾served as research assistants on this project. Mark Leff, then
a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Chicago, prepared a
history of federal firearms legislation that bears a striking
resemblance to the materials in the first section of Part I. The views
expressed in this article are, of course, my own, and do not necessarily
reflect those of the individuals and agencies that have cooperated in
this research.
1. Gun Control Act of 1968, § 101, Pub. L. No. 90-618, 82 Stat. 1213.
2. Between 1963 and 1973 the rate of crime homicide known to the
police increased from 4.5 per 100,000 to 9.3 per 100,000. Killings by
all means other than guns increased from 2.0 per 100,000 to 3.1 per
100,000. Gun killings increased from 2.5 per 100,000 to 6.2 per 100,000.
Compare Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.), Uniform Crime Reports
1963, at 3, 6-8 with id. 1973, at 6-10. See also George D. Newton &
Franklin E. Zimring, Firearms and Violence in American Life 49-53 (Nat’l
Comm’n on the Causes & Prevention of Violence, Staff Report, 1963) for a
discussion of the relationship between firearms and violent crime.
3. A partial list of empirical studies of changes in law includes
Vilhelm Aubert, Some Social Functions of Legislation, 10 Acta
Sociologica 98 (1966); David C. Baldus, Welfare as a Loan: An Empirical
Study of the Recovery of Public Assistance Payments in the United
States, 25 Stan. L. Rev. 123 (1973); Donald T. Campbell, Reforms as
Experiments, 24 Am. Psychologist 409 (1969); Donald T. Campbell & H.
Laurence Ross, The Connecticut Crackdown on Speeding: Time-Series
Analysis Data in Quasi-Experimental Analysis, 3 L. & Soc’y Rev. 33
(1968); Gene V. Glass, Analysis of Data on the Connecticut Speeding
Crackdown as a Time-Series Quasi-Experiment, 3 L. & Soc’y Rev. 55 (1968)
1 Gene V. Glass, George C. Tiao, & Thomas 0. Maguire, The 1960 Revision
of German Divorce Laws: Analysis of Data as a Time-Series
Quasi-Experiment, 5 L. & Soc’y Rev. 539 (1971); William M. Landes &
Lewis C. Solmon, Compulsory Schooling Legislation: An Economic Analysis
of Law and Social Change in the Nineteenth Century, 32 J. Econ. Hist. 54
(1972); H. Laurence Ross, Law, Science and Accidents: The British Road
Safety Act of 1967, 2 J. Leg. Studies 1 (1973); Johan Thorsten Sellin,
The Death Penalty: A Report for the Model Penal Code Project of the
American Law Institute (1959).
4. Among other legislative changes studied¾liberalization of
divorce law in turn-of-the-century Germany, "crackdowns" on speeding and
drunk driving in the United States and Great Britain, abolition and
reintroduction of the death penalty for murder, and provisions for
recovering welfare payments from the estates of former recipients.
5. See Donald T. Campbell, supra note 3.
6. See, e.g., Robert Sherrill, The Saturday Night Special 19, 297
(1973).
7. See, e.g., Harold W. Glassen, Firearms Control: A Matter of
Distinction, 8 Trial, January/February 1972, at 52, 54.
8. George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 87 & n.4.
9. Mark Leff, Federal Firearms Control Before 1920 (unpublished
paper, Univ. of Chicago Law Sch., Center for Criminal justice).
10. Hearings on H.R. 2610 and H.R. 25170 before a Subcommittee of
the House Comm. on Ways and Means, 62d Cong, 2d Sess., passim. (1912);
51 Cong. Rec. 14248 (1914) (introduction of H.R. 18520 by Representative
Kindel); 52 Cong. Rec. 4084 (1915) (remarks of Senator Shields).
11. Revenue Act of 1918, ch. 18 § 900(10), 40 Stat. 1057, 1122 (now
Int. Rev. Code of 1954, § 4181).
12. See 56 Cong. Rec. (App.) 612 (1918) (remarks of Representative
Lonergan).
13. The Wildlife Restoration Act, 16 U.S.C. § 669 (b) (1970)
earmarks receipts from the tax to state wild-life preservation programs.
14. Lamar T. Beman, comp., Outlawing the Pistol (1926), passim.
15. 65 Cong. Rec. (Index) 140, 295 (1924).
16. Act of June 25, 1948, § 1715, 62 Stat. 781 (codified at 18
U.S.C. § 1715 (1970)).
17. See Interstate Traffic in Mail-Order Firearms, hearings before
the Subcomm. to Investigate juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Comm. on
the Judiciary, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 14, at 3186 (1963).
18. Act of June 25, 1948, § 1715, 62 Stat. 781 (codified at 18
U.S.C. § 1715 (1970)).
19. See notes 30 (Federal Firearms Act) and 89 (Gun Control Act of
1968), infra.
20. Nat’l Conf. of Comm’s on Uniform State Laws, Handbook and
Proceedings 1923, at 20.
21. Uniform Firearms Act § 11, in id. 1926, at 577.
22. Id. 1927, at 890.
23. John Brabner-Smith, Firearm Regulation, 1 Law & Contemp. Prob.
400 (1934); Drastic Law Aimed at Pistols, N.Y. Times, Feb. 23, 1927, at 25.
24. See generally, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of
Roosevelt, vol. 2, The Coming of the New Deal (1958).
25. William J. Helmer, The Gun That Made the Twenties Roar, 114-16
(1969).
26. Roosevelt Opens Attack on Crime, Signing Six Bills as
Challenge, N.Y. Times, May 19, 1934, at 1; 3 The Public Papers of
Franklin D. Roosevelt 242-45 (Samuel I. Rosenman ed. 1938).
27. Roosevelt Cites Own Case to Show Gun Permit Dangers, N.Y.
Times, Sept. 3, 1931, at 8; Governor Vetoes Law Changes, N.Y. Times,
March 29, 1932, at 4.
28. Hearings on H.R. 9066 before the House Committee on Ways and
Means, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., at 4, 65, and 130 (1934).
29. Even when the bill included handgun registration, it was
popularly known as an "anti-machine gun" law. See Cummings Asks
Airplanes, N.Y. Times, April 25, 1934, at 3.
30. National Firearms Act, ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236 (1934), as
amended by Int. Rev. Code of 1954, §§ 5801-5872.
31. Federal Firearms Act, ch. 850, 52 Stat. 1250 (1938) (repealed
by Pub. L. No. 90-351, § 906, 82 Stat. 234 (1968)).
32. Harrison Act, Int. Rev. Code of 1954, § 4701 et seq. (repealed
by Pub. L. No. 91-513, § 1101(b)(3) (a), 84 Stat. 1292 (1970)).
33. Governmentally owned weapons were exempt from the tax and
constituted the bulk of all registered weapons. See U.S. Int. Rev.
Service (I.R.S.), Annual Report of the Comm’ner 1941, at 29.
34. Haynes v. United States, 390 U.S. 85 (1968). Two companion
cases, Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39 (1968), and Grosso v.
United States, 390 U.S. 62 (1968), struck down convictions based on
failure to register and report as gamblers under Int. Rev. Code of 1954,
§§ 4401-4423. In all three cases the constitutional flaw was that
registration and reporting would show the registrant to be violating
state or federal law. The N.F.A. amendments in 1968 provide that
registration information may not be used in a criminal prosecution.
35. National Firearms Act, ch. 757, §§ 5801, 5811, 5821, 48 Stat.
1236 (1934), as amended Int. Rev. Code of 1954, §§ 5801, 5811, 5821.
36. William J. Helmer, supra note 25, at 152-53.
37. Id. at 144-45.
38. Federal Firearms Act, ch. 850, 52 Stat. 1250 (1938) (repealed
by Pub. L. No. 90-351, § 906, 82 Stat. 234 (1968)).
39. The origin of the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 was S. 3, 74th
Cong., 1st Sess. (1935), introduced by Sen. Copeland of New York in 1935
and reportedly drafted. by the Senator’s staff, a representative of the
justice Department, and a representative of the National Rifle
Association. See 79 Cong. Rec. 11973 (1935) (remarks of Sen. Copeland).
Watching this bill’s progress unenthusiastically, the justice Department
continued its campaign for firearms registration, eliciting some
favorable editorial response, but little congressional support. Homer
Cummings to Robert L. Doughton, with attached editorials, April 11,
1938, Folder 708, Robert L. Doughton Papers in the Southern Historical
Collection at the University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill,
North Carolina. The N.R.A. predicted that "The passage of this measure
[the F.F.A.] would mean the death of the Attorney General’s bills." See
Carl Bakal, the Right to Bear Arms 177 (1966).
40. Federal Firearms Act, ch. 850, § 3 (a), 52 Stat. 1251 (1938).
41. Federal Firearms Act, ch. 850, §§ 2 (c) -2 (d), 52 Stat.
1250-51 (1938).
42. Federal Firearms Act, ch. 850, § 7, 52 Stat. 1252 (1938); T.D.
4834, 1938-2 Cum. Bull. 465, 467.
43. Robert Sherrill asserts that the first arrest of a dealer under
this section was made in 1968. Robert Sherrill, supra note 6, at 66.
44. Federal Firearms Act [II], hearings on S. 1 before the Subcomm.
to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Comm. on the
Judiciary, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., at 40 (1967).
45. Mail order advertisements for guns contained forms for the
prospective customer to sign, relieving the dealer of liability under
the Act. See Interstate Traffic in Mail Order Firearms, supra note 17,
pt. 14, at 3231.
46. Treas. Reg. §§ 315.0-315.14, T.D. 4898, 1939-1 Cum. Bull. 364.
47. Federal Firearms Act, ch. 850, § 3(d), 52 Stat. 1252 (1938).
48. Treas. Reg. § 315.10(c), T.D. 48982 1939-1 Cum. Bull. 370.
49. Treas. Reg. § 177.53 (1958).
50. Federal Firearms Act, ch. 850, § 7, 52 Stat. 1252 (1938).
51. My own view is that form 4473 and other provisions of the 1968
dealer regulations could have been accomplished by regulation, while the
ban on sales to nonresidents and minors could only have been
accomplished by legislation. However, while regulation could not have
prohibited sales to nonresidents, the Service might have required
special identification procedures and, perhaps, notification of local
law enforcement officials in the transferee’s state.
52. Federal Firearms Act [II], supra note 44, at 75. In 1965, the
Treasury Department had testified that it had assigned only five workers
in its national office to devote full time to these enforcement duties.
See 26 Cong. Q. Weekly Rep. 809 (1968).
53. Robert Sherrill, supra note 6, at 66.
54. George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 6.
55. Id. at 89.
56. Id. at 13.
57. Id. at 83.
58. George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 89;
see also id. at 201-40 (App. G).
59. Ibid.
60. United States v. Tot, 131 F.2d 261 (3d Cir. 1942).
61. The minimum conditions for tracing a gun are:
(1) determination of the manufacturer;
(2) serial number;
(3) that the manufacturer keep records as required by the F.F.A.
It is not necessary in the prosecution of a felon to prove how or
when he acquired the weapon if the weapon was first sold after 1968. Gun
Control Act of 1968, § 105 (a), 82 Stat. 1226. For discussion of the
F.F.A. provisions see United States v. Tot, 131 F.2d 261, 270 (3d Cir.
1942).
62. Mark Leff, supra note 9, at 13. See also John Brabner-Smith,
supra note 23, at 402; Homer Cummings October 5, 1937, Speech, in
Selected Papers at 86 (Carl Brent ed., 1939); Herbert Corey, Farewell,
Mr. Gangster!, at 133 (1936).
63. Pistol Control Sought, N.Y. Times, Jan. 12, 1936, § 4, at 11;
U.S. Dep’t of justice, Annual Report of the Att’y Gen’l 1935, Jan. 4,
1936 message, at 2. See also Jan. 6, 1937 message in id. 1936, at 3;
Jan. 3, 1938 message in id. 1937, at 9-10; December 31, 1938 message in
id. 1938, at 8; Jan. 3, 1940 message in id. 1939, at 9; Jan. 3, 1941
message in id. 1940, at 13; 1947 message in id. 1946, at 28.
Attorney-General Cummings’ Jan. 5, 1934, message to Congress (in id.
1933, at 1) also recommended firearms registration. Thus the Jan. 5,
1935 message was the only one in F.D.R.’s first two terms that failed to
deal with this issue.
64. George A Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 101-02.
65. Id. at 102.
66. Id. at 172-73 (Tables C-1 and C-2).
67. Ibid.
68. S. 3714, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. (1958).
69. Mutual Security Act of 1958, § 403(k), 22 U.S.C. § 1934(b) (1970).
70. George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 173
(Table C-2).
71. Id. See also id. at 18, 20.
72. Federal Firearms Act [II], supra note 44, at 975.
73. Richard Harris, Annals of Legislation: If You Love Your Guns,
New Yorker, April 20, 1968, at 57; Robert Sherrill, supra note 6, it 92-93.
74. While the representative of the National Shooting Sports
Foundation, an industry group, was not displeased with the Dodd handgun
proposal, there is no firm evidence that the proposed ban on mail-order
weapons would itself represent any protection to domestic manufacturers.
The later marriage of importation bans with proposals to strengthen
controls of interstate sales does not establish that the controls were
simply a front for protectionist legislation.
75. Thomas Dodd, Federal Firearms Legislation, 1961-1968, at 3
(unpublished report prepared for the Subcomm. to Investigate Juvenile
Delinquency of the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 1968).
76. Id. at 10.
77. This proposal became S. 1975, introduced August 2, 1963, 87th
Cong., 1st Sess.
78. Interstate Traffic in Mail Order Firearms, supra note 17, pt.
14, at 3497 (1963) (testimony of Howard Carter, Jr., Member, Board of
Governors, National Shooting Sports Foundation).
79. Id. at 3498.
80. Thomas Dodd, supra note 74, at 13.
81. Id. at 55.
82. H.R. Doc. No. 103, 89th Cong., 1st Sess. (1965), 111 Cong. Rec.
4278 (1965).
83. S. 1592, 89th Cong., 1st Sess. (1965).
84. Thomas Dodd, supra note 74, at 26-27. A milder proposal, S.
3767, was reported out of committee and the committee report discussed
S. 1592 as well. Senator Dodd asserted that supporters of his bill were
planning to introduce S. 1592 as an amendment to S. 3767, but that S.
3767 was never brought up for debate. Id. at 24, 27.
85. S. 1 (90th Cong., 1st Sess.) introduced Jan. 11, 1967, and
evidently an early draft of the Johnson Administration gun proposal; and
S. 1 Amendment 90 (90th Cong., 1st Sess.), the Administration’s
redrafted proposal. See Federal Firearms Act [II], supra note 44, at 37.
86. S. Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968).
87. Passed the Senate May 24, 1968, 114 Cong. Rec. 14889 (1968);
passed the House June 6, 1968, 114 Cong. Rec. 16300 (1968).
88. H.R. 11427, 89th Cong., 2d Sess. (1966).
89. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) (1970).
90. The major bills and their sponsors: S. 3691, introduced by Dodd
and supported by the President; S. 3637, Brooke; S. 3634, Tydings; H.R.
18628, Rosenthal, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968).
91. See text accompanying notes 24 through 39 supra.
92. Since Senator Dodd left his subcommittee chairmanship, two sets
of hearings have been held in Congress on substantive gun control
matters. The Senate Subcommittee held hearings in 1971 on the "domestic
Saturday Night Special." The House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee No.
5. held hearings in June of 1972 to consider a number of firearm control
proposals, including one by then Chairman Celler.
93. The senior staff of the Senate Subcommittee on juvenile
Delinquency left shortly after Thomas Dodd left the Senate. Since then,
I know of no staff-study relating to gun control on Capitol Hill.
94. George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 172-73.
95 Id. at 74.
96. F.B.I., Uniform Crime Reports, 1964, at 104 (1964); id. 1968,
at 108.
97. Data supplied by F.B.I., Uniform Crime Reports, 1969, at 7; see
Figure 2 infra.
98. See Figures 5 and 6 infra.
99. National Firearms Act, Int. Rev. Code of 1954, § 5848.
100. Gun Control Act of 1968) 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) (1970).
101. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 925(d)(3) (1970).
102. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922(a) (1970).
103. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. 923 (a) (3) (C) (1970).
104. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. 923(d) (1970).
105. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. 926 (1970).
106. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922(e) (1970).
107. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922(b) (1970).
108. Treas. Reg. § 178.124 (1968).
109. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922 (a) (5) (1970).
110. Gun Control Act of 1969,18 U.S.C. § 923(g) (1970); Treas. Reg.
§ 178.121 (1968). See also Federal Firearms Act [II], supra note 44, at
94-95; note infra.
111. Robert J. Kukla, Gun Control: A Written Record of Efforts to
Eliminate the Private Possession of Firearms in America (1973).
112. See text accompanying note 33 supra.
113. Federal Firearms Act, ch. 850, § 2(f), 52 Stat. 1251 (1938).
114. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922 (d) (3) (1970).
115. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922 (h) (1970).
116. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 App. U.S.C. § 1202 (a) (1970).
117. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922(b) (1970).
118. Treas. Reg. § 178.124(c) (1968).
119. Treas. Reg. § 178.124(d) (1968).
120. For information on the number of agencies that would have to
be checked, at highly optimistic cost estimates, see George D. Newton &
Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 129-30.
121. A state law, e.g., is the Illinois statute Ill. Rev. Stat.,
ch. 38, §§ 83-3, 83-4 (1970).
122. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922 (h) (1970); Gun
Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(6) (1970).
123. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922 (b) (5) (1970).
124. Gun Control Act of 1968, § 105 (a), 82 Stat. 1226.
125. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922 (1) (1970).
126. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 925(d) (1970).
127. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 925 (d) (3) (1970).
128. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 925(d) (1970). See
Federal Firearms Act [I], hearings on S. 1592 before the Subcomm. to
investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 89th
Cong., 1st Sess., at 68-69 (1965).
129. "The Secretary may authorize a firearm or ammunition to be
imported . . . if the person importing . . . the firearm establishes to
the satisfaction of the Secretary. . . ." Gun Control Act of 1968, 18
U.S.C. § 925(d) (1970).
130. Treas. Reg. § 178.112(c) (1968).
131. Treas. Reg. § 178.112(c) (1968).
132. "Saturday Night Special" Handguns, S. 2507, hearings before
the Subcomm. to Investigate juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Comm. on
the Judiciary, 92d Cong., 1st Sess., at 132-33 (1971).
133. George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 172-73.
134. Id.
135. See U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury, Int’l Rev. Ser., Treasury,
Postal Service and General Government Appropriations for Fiscal Year
1974, hearings before a Subcomm. of the House Comm. on Appropriations,
93d Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, at 671 (1973); see Table 6 infra. See also
note 163 infra.
136. Federal Firearms Act [II], supra note 44, at 44.
137. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(3) (1970); Treas.
Reg. § 178.11 (1968).
138. Title II, § 13, of the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1970, Pub.
L. No. 91-644, 94 Stat. 1880, 1889-90 amended § 924(c) of Title 18 to
provide an additional sentence of not less than one year nor more than
ten years for federal crimes in which a firearm is used or for federal
crimes in which a firearm is carried unlawfully. In the case of a second
or subsequent conviction under this subsection, such person shall be
sentenced to not less than two (used to be five) nor more than
twenty-five years. The court shall not suspend the sentence in the case
of a second or subsequent conviction or give a probationary sentence.
Section 13 prohibited allowing terms of imprisonment imposed under this
subsection from running concurrently with any term of imprisonment
imposed for the commission of such felony.
139. T.D.O. No. 221, 1972-1 Cum. Bull. 777 (1972).
140. See note 52 supra.
141. Estimates provided by Regional Offices, U.S. Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
142. Ibid.
143. Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1974, supra note 136, at
682-83, 686.
144. Id. at 705.
145. At present, the management information system used by the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms does not generate data on
percentage of criminal enforcement devoted to dealers.
146. Personal communication from Carl Perian (Phoenix, Arizona,
April 3, 1974).
147. Personal communication from Peter Velde (Phoenix, Arizona,
April 3, 1974).
148. Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Title XI, §§ 841-849, 18
U.S.C. §§ 841-849 (1970). Section 847 vests administration of the
chapter in the Secretary of the Treasury. Delegation Order No. 31 (Rev.
2), 1970-2 Cum. Bull. 487, delegates regulation powers to the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
149. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 922 (1970).
150. No precise estimate is possible because the audited forms were
not a random sample. The random sample figure would suggest that 2% of
all 2.4 million new handgun transactions suggest some apparent irregularity.
151. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms reports that
man-days invested in firearms enforcement increased from 80,000 in
fiscal year 1968 to a reported 252,126 in fiscal year 1972. The parallel
figure for 1973 was 258,983.
152. Treas. Reg. § 178.121 (1968). Treas. Reg. § 178.23 (1968)
gives internal revenue officers rights of entry and examination.
153. George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 13
(Figure 3-1).
154. See text accompanying note 33 supra.
155. George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 5.
See also Table 5 infra.
156. Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1974, supra note 135, at 682.
157. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 925(d)(3) (1970).
158. See p. 154, supra.
159. See Federal Firearms Act [II], supra note 128, at 69.
160. U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury, Int’l Rev. Ser., Factoring
Criteria for Weapons, Form 4590 (11-69) reprinted in Appropriations for
Fiscal Year 1974, supra note 135, pt. 1, at 671 (1973).
161. Ibid.
162. Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 925(d)(3) (1970).
163. 1968 rifle imports and shotgun imports are reported in George
D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 172-173. 1970 rifle
imports totaled 218,979. 1970 shotgun imports totaled 422,100. (1970
figures supplied by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.)
164. George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 11,
21, 61.
165. Id. at 61.
166. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Int’l Rev. Ser. Factoring
Criteria for Weapons, Form 4590 (11-69). See note 135 supra.
167. Ibid.
168. Ibid.
169. U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms, Project Identification 3 (1973).
170. George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 50;
see also id. at 171-74.
171. In an effort to reconcile the import totals, 1973 import
permits issued by the Southeastern Regional Office of the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were analyzed. It was found that the two
categories that are counted as handguns by A.T.F. but not by
Customs¾starter guns and major handgun parts¾were not a significant part
of the guns imported under permit. With respect to starter guns, the
Census Bureau reports a total number of 88,000 imported during 1972. See
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Foreign Trade Division, FT 246¾U.S. Imports
for Consumption 1972 (1973).
172. Robert Sherrill, supra note 6, at 304. The dollar volume of
imported handgun parts in 1972 totaled $3,500,000.
173. I.R.S., Annual Report of the Comm’er, 1969, tab. 3, at 107;
id., 1972, tab. 3, at 111. See Table 5 infra for handgun production
estimates.
174. H.R. 3980, 92d Cong., 1st Sess. (1971).
175. S. 2507, 92d Cong., 1st Sess. (1971).
176. 118 Cong. Rec. 27502 (1972).
177. Gun Control Legislation, hearings before Subcomm. No. 5 of the
H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 92d Cong., 2d Sess., serial no. 33, at 239-40
(1972).
178. See, e.g., the Illinois proposal, HB-1058, 78th General
Assembly (1973).
179. S. 2507, 92d Cong., 1st Sess. (1971).
180. See Table 6 supra; Figure 1 supra; George D. Newton & Franklin
E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 172-73.
181. See Table 6 supra.
182. N.Y. Penal Law § 400.00(2) (McKinney 1973); Mass. Ann. Laws
ch. 140, § 131 (1972).
183. George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 91.
184. U.S. Dep’t of justice, Firearms Facts (unpublished report
1968). See George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, supra note 2, at 123.
185. Id. at 123, 181.
186. Id. at 91.
187. Ibid. See also id. at 49-50.
188. See Figures 6 and 7 infra.
189. See note 175 supra; see also text accompanying notes 180 and
181 supra.
190. Case studies prepared by U.S. Dep’t of Treasury, Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Criminal Enforcement Division (unpublished).
191. Ibid.
192. Ibid.
193. Memorandum, from Charles R. Peterson, Assistant Regional
Commissioner, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Mid-Atlantic
Regional Office re: Operation Disarm the Criminal, at 1 (August 6, 1970).
194. Compare the Peterson memorandum, id. at 1, with Stephen D.
Brill, How Guns Get to Town: Tracing the Southern Connection, New York
[Magazine], April 8, 1974, at 42 (reporting 63 agents spending about
half of their time on firearms enforcement in New York City, with ten
times the population of Washington, D.C.).
195. Charles R. Peterson, supra note 190, at 3.
196. Id. at 2.
197. The monthly data were originally provided by Chief Jerald
Wilson’s office. When subsequent checks with- homicide records revealed
a number of months where the Chief’s figures and the Homicide Unit
figures diverged, the planning department of the police force audited
the 1969, 1970 and 1971 monthly reports. The figures for the thirty-six
observations during these years are not the same as reported to the FBI,
although the deviations are relatively minor. Also, justifiable
homicides have been deleted from these months.
198. The nongun killing series had 49 pre-intervention observations
and 23 post-intervention observations based on an assumption that
February 1970 is the first "post" observation. The estimated change in
level is an additional .99 killings per month, which is not significant
at the < .05 level (T = 1.36, significant at < .10, with 68 degrees of
freedom). Nongun killings were also run assuming delays in enforcement
impact of three and seven months, respectively, with no significant
change in the volume of killings noted.
Figure 12 presents a graphic representation of the nongun series.
199. The gun-killing series had the same 49 pre-intervention months
and 23 post-intervention months, based on February 1970 as the first
"post" observation. The estimated change in level is a reduction of 8.59
killings per month (T = -3.14, significant at < .005 with 68 degrees of
freedom)
Figure 13 presents a graphic representation.
200. The problem with using standard time-series programs is that
enforcement programs might have an accretive impact on gun supplies.
Since our outcome measure is directed to handgun scarcity, it is to be
expected that the enforcement effort will lead to greater scarcity after
two months than one, and the model of impact should be cumulative.
Indeed, if the major impact of Operation D.C. was putting gun
traffickers out of business by arrest, and if arrest kept the trafficker
out of circulation for six months, the impact of the program should be
six times as great after six months as after one.
After the initial analysis had been performed, Professor Gene V.
Glass of the University of Colorado performed a time series analysis of
the Washington data using a program which postulated the impact of the
campaign accretively, as a gradual reduction in gun killings to reflect
the, cumulative impact of the campaign on gun scarcity. The model
predicted the following proportions of full impact by month for the
program on gun killings in 1970.
Jan.
0
July
6/6
Feb.
1/6
Aug.
5/6
March
2/6
Sept.
5/6
April
3/6
Oct.
4/6
May
4/6
Nov.
3/6
June
5/6
Dec.
3/6
Succeeding months predicted a drop-off of 1/6 in effectiveness
every two months. This "slow drop" model is a slightly better fit to the
data than the model used in note 199 supra, with a T value of 3.52, with
70 degrees of freedom.
201. An effort to do this as part of Project I, phase 2, has been
planned by the Bureau. However, the manpower cost of tracing beyond
first purchase has prevented any district office from implementing the
trace.
202. Rex Davis, the director of the Bureau, has announced his
intention to draft a regulation requiring dealers to notify the Bureau
of multiple handgun sales, but no regulation had been drafted at the
time this article went to press.
curtjester1
May 25, 2013, 12:37:35 PM5/25/13
to
On May 9, 3:41 pm, Marcus Hanson <marcushans...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I posted this a few days ago over at Duncan MacRae's forum. One of the
> regulars said he had written about the matter but,so far,he has not
> offered anything new.There's a few posts here,from years ago,but nothing
> definitive. I'm particularly interested to know if this rumour was ever
> 'put to bed' officially.
>
> Note please that this is =not= specifically about whether Oswald
> did/did not buy/take possession of the weapons,nor about whether the FBI
> did/did not interfere with Klein's/Seaport's records.Primarily , it is
> about whether or not the rumour of Oswald working for Dodd was ever fully
> investigated.
>
> ===============================================================================
> I posted this a few days ago over at Duncan MacRae's forum. One of the
> regulars said he had written about the matter but,so far,he has not
> offered anything new.There's a few posts here,from years ago,but nothing
> definitive. I'm particularly interested to know if this rumour was ever
> 'put to bed' officially.
>
> Note please that this is =not= specifically about whether Oswald
> did/did not buy/take possession of the weapons,nor about whether the FBI
> did/did not interfere with Klein's/Seaport's records.Primarily , it is
> about whether or not the rumour of Oswald working for Dodd was ever fully
> investigated.
>
>
> The late George Michael Evica developed a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald
> worked for the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.In typical
> political nomenclature,this body was commonly called after its chairman
> and known as The Dodd Committee.
>
> Here is an essay on the subject :http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/the_critics/evica/We_still_all_mortal_Ev...
> The late George Michael Evica developed a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald
> worked for the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.In typical
> political nomenclature,this body was commonly called after its chairman
> and known as The Dodd Committee.
>
>
> And here is a piece by Dale Myers , which casts grave doubt on Oswald's
> involvement with Dodd :http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/oswalds-mail-order-revolver-p...
> And here is a piece by Dale Myers , which casts grave doubt on Oswald's
>
> I believe that Oswald did own the pistol , and the rifle . And that he
> used them to murder two people .
>
It's ok to have doubts.
> I believe that Oswald did own the pistol , and the rifle . And that he
> used them to murder two people .
>
http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=3&topic_id=85804&mesg_id=85804
CJ
curtjester1
May 25, 2013, 12:39:20 PM5/25/13
to
On May 9, 11:00 pm, Canuck <prwhit...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, May 9, 2013 12:41:40 PM UTC-7, Marcus Hanson wrote:
> > I posted this a few days ago over at Duncan MacRae's forum. One of the
>
> > regulars said he had written about the matter but,so far,he has not
>
> > offered anything new.There's a few posts here,from years ago,but nothing
>
> > definitive. I'm particularly interested to know if this rumour was ever
>
> > 'put to bed' officially.
>
> > Note please that this is =not= specifically about whether Oswald
>
> > did/did not buy/take possession of the weapons,nor about whether the FBI
>
> > did/did not interfere with Klein's/Seaport's records.Primarily , it is
>
> > about whether or not the rumour of Oswald working for Dodd was ever fully
>
> > investigated.
>
> > ===============================================================================
> On Thursday, May 9, 2013 12:41:40 PM UTC-7, Marcus Hanson wrote:
> > I posted this a few days ago over at Duncan MacRae's forum. One of the
>
> > regulars said he had written about the matter but,so far,he has not
>
> > offered anything new.There's a few posts here,from years ago,but nothing
>
> > definitive. I'm particularly interested to know if this rumour was ever
>
> > 'put to bed' officially.
>
> > Note please that this is =not= specifically about whether Oswald
>
> > did/did not buy/take possession of the weapons,nor about whether the FBI
>
> > did/did not interfere with Klein's/Seaport's records.Primarily , it is
>
> > about whether or not the rumour of Oswald working for Dodd was ever fully
>
> > investigated.
>
>
> > The late George Michael Evica developed a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald
>
> > worked for the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.In typical
>
> > political nomenclature,this body was commonly called after its chairman
>
> > and known as The Dodd Committee.
>
> > Here is an essay on the subject :http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/the_critics/evica/We_still_all_mortal_Ev...
> > The late George Michael Evica developed a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald
>
> > worked for the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.In typical
>
> > political nomenclature,this body was commonly called after its chairman
>
> > and known as The Dodd Committee.
>
>
> > And here is a piece by Dale Myers , which casts grave doubt on Oswald's
>
> > involvement with Dodd :
>
> >http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/oswalds-mail-order-revolver-p...
> > And here is a piece by Dale Myers , which casts grave doubt on Oswald's
>
> > involvement with Dodd :
>
office, to fill out the proper forms on a transaction.
As they say in the JFK case....oops.
CJ
Jean Davison
May 25, 2013, 4:14:07 PM5/25/13
to
More nonsense from Mark Lane et al. As usual, Lane left out
the context. The P.O. had strict requirements for sending *handguns*
through the mail, not rifles.
Jean
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