the district attorney, and the district attorney refuses to say, well, you have violated the law, I am going to prosecute you for the use of a gun in the commission of a felony. She never left home because her husband, I mean the boyfriend says I don't want to prosecute her, and she wasn't prosecuted.

I think it's dereliction on the part of the district attorney when he allows the third law not to be prosecuted.

Mr. CONYERS. Well, I think you raise some important points about the breakdown of police effectiveness, about questions of how the prosecutor elects to bring charges where gun offenses are involved, and about the way the judiciary operates upon the finding of guilt. Now it seems to me that all of those questions, particularly the ones that you raised in your presentation, Senator, are State legislative problems.

What, if anything, can be done at a local level to help the police become more effective, you say there is a breakdown in the operations of the police.

Mr. MCKINNEY. I have individually attacked and maybe I was wrong, some of the judges. Nobody wants to attack the judge but you know the power that he has and once he gets you before him, well, he'll say that's Billy McKinney.

If LEAA would spend some of their funds monitoring the courts, monitoring the district attorney. Like I say, just this case last week is an instance of a prosecution that ought to take place.

Mr. CONYERS. After LEAA monitored them, what would happen then?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Well, if I know that

Mr. CONYERS. I mean, you can pass a law

Mr. MCKINNEY. Well, if I know that, the judge knows that he is under surveillance and we have had private, we have had the Atlanta Metropolitan Crime Commission, we have spent some of our money to monitor the courts to see that the courts were administering the law, so once this thing breaks down like it has now, then, you know, I don't have any confidence in it. The citizens don't have any confidence in it, that it is protecting them. Statistics that come from the police, that come from the courts, show that very few people and then once we are there, very concrete cases against people, use of a gun, rob a man, 2 years probation, never go to jail, for committing a robbery with a gun.

Mr. CONYERS. Of course these are ancillary questions, aren't they? I think the question we have to raise in the context of Federal firearms legislation is whether or not increasing or reducing the avalanche of handguns that are available to the citizens of Atlanta is going to be helpful or harmful.

Mr. BELL. Mr. Chairman, if I may interrupt

Mr. CONYERS. I was trying to conclude on a note, one which we could all agree.

Mr. BELL. Oh, well I was going to say one thing and I don't want you to lose sight, or anyone watching this program lose sight, of the great value of what you are doing here, because we are talking about a problem that the general public in our complex society, they are primarily concerned as they ought to be with their own family, with

their own communities, with their own lives and so they don't understand many times what causes the problem.

Now what you are doing here and what channel 30 is doing here, we are allowing the public to see all of the aspects of this problem. Now I have confidence the public will make the right decision, and that is what worries me many times about these approaches, with these simple and I don't mean to say that yours is a simple approach-but the idea of some people that we should strip all the weapons out of the hands of the American public and do these other things, that would accomplish, that really would accomplish the reduction of crime; but I can design for you or anybody who is interested in listening, a government in which we will never have any crime, but I'll guarantee you I'll be on the first ship leaving this Nation when it gets to be that way.

Mr. CONYERS. Well, on the note that you struck about having more confidence in the public than perhaps in some of the elected officials, I want to hasten to add my note of concurrence. I must at this point call your colleague David Scott because, because of your ability to engage the Chair in some very interesting and challenging conversation, we have gone far beyond our time, and I really thank you both for your contribution.

Mr. BELL. We thank you and we apologize.

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you.

Mr. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CONYERS. I would like to call Representative David Scott for several minutes to continue this conversation and add whatever remarks that he might wish to add at this point.

Welcome.

[The prepared statement of Hon. David Scott follows:]

STATEMENT OF HON. DAVID SCOTT, GEORGIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Representative Conyers, thank you very much for this opportunity to testify before this distinguished Congressional Committee. This issue of gun control is of particular significance to me. I authored and introduced in the Georgia House of Representatives the Georgia Handgun Regulation ActH.B. 249.

I would like to take this opportunity to state as strongly as I can that we must control the handgun! The bloody statistics tell us that we as a nation are at the point of the handgun controlling us! As a lawmaker from the deep South, Georgia Legislature, I make this compassionate plea to this Committee and every right thinking American: Please, let us allow reason and logic to prevail over the sickening violence resulting from a society fearfully overridden and pathetically mesmerized by the handgun!

What is our future? If we do not act now to curb the easy accessibility and availability of the handgun, where will be five years or ten or fifteen years from now? America, guns beget guns, and guns beget violence, and violence begets more violence. We must put an end to this sickening and tragically escalating cycle.

What is the handgun made for? It is the only instrument manufactured, distributed, and sold to the public for the sole purpose of killing humans. Are we to say it is sane, logical and reasonable to, in a highly urban society, allow for non-uniform regulations of this merchant of death?

My argument, America, is simple: We live in a society in which the highest priority is the preservation of life; the freedom to live! We have, through our ingenious efforts, developed an instrument that reflects man's greatest inhumanity to man: the handgun, the expressed purpose of which is to kill people. There is no other purpose. The least we can do is to see to it that persons who buy and/or possess the handgun meet minimum qualifications, such as age, mental competency, residency, no previous felony crime with a gun, not have killed anyone before. Is that asking too much for each of our

fifty states to insure? Is it not our first responsibility as government to do all we can to enhance the public's safety? In the name of God, we must love our fellow man enough to insist, if this deadly instrument must be tolerated in our society, that we take as much precaution as possible to protect the safety of our public! This can be done most effectively by licensing registration, a waiting period before purchase and by requiring each of the fifty states to administer such provisions through their departments of public safety.

Georgia, the state I serve in the House of Representatives, and South Carolina, the state of my birth, have the least requirements for gun purchases. Consequently, they also, annually, have the highest violent crime rates and lead the way in supplying the rest of this nation with handguns used in violent crimes. It was reported on a CBS Special recently that 38% of the handguns confiscated in violent crimes in New York Ctiy, during a six month period in 1973, came from South Carolina and Georgia. In no other two states can handguns be purchased so easily, quickly and in such great abundance. So, sadly, Georgia, a state I love dearly, contributed dramatically to the violent crime rates of New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, and the entire country because of our legislature's failure to act responsibly by enacting a meaningful handgun regulation law.

Many of our states such as New York, Michigan, Illinois, and Maryland, have acted responsibly and have gun laws. But it is difficult for these states to be effective when anyone can come down to Georgia and South Carolina and buy as many pistols, take them back to New York or Chicago, or Detroit, or elsewhere, and sell them for three or four times the $30 paid for each.

In a recent Harris survey it was revealed that 72% of the American people favor the enactment of effective gun control laws. In my own state of Georgia the demand for legislation runs extremely high. But, why no laws? Why are our elected officials reluctant to tackle this issue? Why?

Why in the face of what seems so logical and reasonable do we fail to get each state to regulate this deadly weapon; at least as it does cars, marriages, pharmacists, architects, dogs, etc.? The answer: because, of the well disguised and influential money interests. The work of which is carried out, in a masterful way, by the tentacles and branches of the massive and powerful gun lobby; acting in Washington and at every level of legislative and executive state and local governments. A lobby whose power is second only to oil lobby.

This gun lobby's special interest must be exposed to the American people for what it is; a very tragic but effective, very deadly but powerful, group of combined industrial giants in the ammunitions and arms industries along with sportsmen clubs, hunting clubs, wholesale and retail gun and ammunition dealers and NRA members throughout the country who realize that if meaningful laws are enacted to stop making the handgun so easily accessible and available, sales will go down!

It is not important to these businessmen who thrive on the manufacture, distribution and sale of these death merchants, that; if the handgun was not in the house, the wife might be alive today, that; the neighbor who got in an argument with his friends would be alive, that; if the handgun was not so readily available to a violent crime, 70% of which, is enabled by the presence or possession of a handgun, might go down, No! These developments are of litte significance if it also means, correspondingly, that handgun and ammunition sales would decrease also!

We as responsible public officials must get the American people to understand that behind it all is big money. Most major anti-gun control groups are sponsored and encouraged, directly or indirectly, by these special interests. This is the worst example of how special interests is placed before the public interests. For there is no greater public interest or public need than life. In the name of human decency, we must control this menace to life!

As a public official from a deep south state, a region of the country known historically for the easiest access to guns and the highest violent crime rates, I plead to this Committee and to the nation: Please let us focus our greatest attention to this business of handguns. How much longer must we wait hefore our legislatures act? How many more American lives must be lost? Will we continue to allow public policy on handguns to be determined by the powerful money-hungry special interests of the ammunitions and arms industry. the NRA, the gun lobby? America-we must control this violent killer. It is about to control us!

RÉSUMÉ

Personal Background: Name: David Scott. Birthplace: Horry County, South Carolina. Birthdate: June 27, 1946. Marital Status: Married, Alfredia Aaron Scott, two children.

Educational Background: Secondary Education: Public schools of Scranton, Pennsylvania; Scarsdale, New York and Daytona Beach, Florida. Undergraduate Education: Florida A. & M. University, B.A. 1967. Graduate Education: Wharton School of Finance, University of Pennsylvania, M.B.A. 1969. Professional Background: Management Intern for Secretary of Labor, United States Labor Department, Washington, D.C., 1967; Research Analyst for The Wharton Industrial Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania, 1968-69; Atlanta Director, R.M.C. Management Consultants, 1969-72; Management Consultant, Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co., 1972-73; Assistant, Intergovernmental Relations, Office of the Governor, State of Georgia, 1973-74; Georgia State Representative Elected to Office, November 1974.

Awards and Associations: Outstanding Young Personality of the South, 1970; Nominated White House Fellow, 1970; Member, Atlanta Chamber of Commerce; Member, Butler Street Y.M.C.A.

TESTIMONY OF HON. DAVID SCOTT, GEORGIA HOUSE OF

REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you very much, Congressman Conyers, and I would like to join the chorus of those congratulating you and Congress and your committee and what you are doing here in Atlanta and throughout this country.

I think that there is some very, very important why's and questions that I think we need to examine and I think we need to clear the air of some very important considerations for the benefit of those who are watching and for the Nation. As you know, I have been sort of involved with this quite a bit in the past year and introduced a bill in the Georgia House of Representatives that has been labeled everything from a Communist plot on one side to not enough on the other side, but I think one of the most important things, and I think Senator Bell put his finger on it, that there is no law that we can pass, Lord knows the laws of the 10 Commandments were passed by a very, very proper and distinguished gentleman, and that has not stopped people from breaking them, that has not stopped killing and so forth.

But, the central question I think we have to raise, those of us who are elected by the public, is what is our responsibility on this entire issue of guns, and I think we need to ask the question, what is this instrument made for? What is it? It is the only instrument that man has ever made for the sole purpose of killing another human. That is the pistol, the handgun. I think the central question has to be to us, it is simply this are we going to be in a position knowing this, this is what it's made for, and not make sure that people meet minimum qualifications before they can possess it and before they can buy it and before they can sell it, and before they can manufacture it.

We have the right to fly on an airplane. We certainly don't have the right to take a bomb with us and take anything with us and hijack that plane.

Now what happens when we put preventive measures. What happens when you have to get on an airplane and travel? You have to go through a screening device, and you in fact have to meet certain. minimum qualifications before you can get on that plane and as a result of that, the confidence in the public that flying has improved and certainly highjacking has gone down.

Now certainly you are a good guy and you are not going to highjack a plane but you have got to go through that process just like the potential bad guy, so the central question here, Mr. Chairman, is (A) the gun is made to kill humans, that is the sole purpose; it is the chief enabler of crime, 80 percent of all violent crimes is enabled by the handgun. There are many causes, but what is the chief enabler? What causes this to happen? The handgun, and are we to sit idly by and say everybody get them.

In Georgia, all it requires is a driver's license. Are we in the Georgia Legislature being responsible to maintain the public safety by saying for this one instrument whose purpose it is to inflict destruction on humans, are we serving the public interest to say all you need is a driver's license, all you have to be is 21; you can get out of a mental, insane asylum here in Georgia, and in 2 minutes go anywhere and get a pistol, legally. In Georgia, we put a man in jail, fine him $5,000, for showing to consenting adults people making love; but if that same man were to sell a pistol to a 10-year-old, nothing happens to him.

Are we being responsible? I think the public needs to examine and I think the public needs to realize who is speaking for the people and who is speaking for the special financial interests. That needs to be exposed, because in the final analysis all we can do is pass a law. The public has to be the one to accept it. The public has to be the one to realize, to be educated, to stop and to think. Sure the American people want the right to bear arms, and I don't think we are talking about-I know we are not talking about taking away anybody's right to buy or to possess arms; but, in a sane and logical society, with the right to do anything comes the responsibility of regulation. That is what we are about. Put forth minimum qualifications.

How are we going to say it's a felony for a man to carry a gun without a license when we don't require the license?

How are we going to say that it is wrong for a man to have a criminal background and have a weapon, when we don't give the police an opportunity to check the man's background out?

What I have offered before the Georgia House of Representatives is simple, a licensing requirement so that we can do our job as legislators to make sure the man meets minimum qualifications, a waiting period, to aid our law enforcement people to check out a person's background and also to provide a cooling off period, for many of the people to go down on the spur of the moment, get a pistol and come back to harm somebody; and a massive education program conducted by each state department of public safety, to educate our people, to let them know that it is not the crook that is going to kill you, your next door neighbor will do it quicker. Your girl friend or your wife's boyfriend. People you know very well.