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Representatives John M. Ashbrook of Ohio, a distinguished Member of this Subcommittee, Marjorie S. Holt of Maryland, the Chairwoman of the House Republican Study Committee, Robert L. F. Sikes of Florida, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Construction of the House Committee on Appropriations, John Paul Hammerschmidt of Arkansas, Teno Roncalio of Wyoming, Dawson Mathis of Georgia, Jack F. Kemp of New York, Sonny Montgomery of Mississippi, Manuel Lujan, Jr. of New Mexico, Delbert Latta of Ohio, Del Clawson of California, W. S. Stuckey, Jr. of Georgia, William L. Dickinson of Alabama, Philip M. Crane of Illinois, Harold Runnels of New Mexico, Steve Symms of Idaho and Richard Ichord of Missouri.

Two State Governors serve on the National Advisory Council of the Committee, Meldrim Thomson, Jr. of New Hampshire and James B. Edwards of South Carolina. Other outstanding Americans serving on the National Advisory Council are Holmes Alexander, the columnist, Major General Aaron Bradshow, Jr., USA (Ret.), M. Stanton Evans, chairman of the American Conservative Union, Henry Hazlitt, the economist, Neil McCaffrey, President of Arlington House Publishers, Lieutenant General James Risely, USMC (Ret.), and George C. Roche, III, President of Hillsdale College.

While the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms does not object to reasonable regulations on the use of firearms, we do object to restrictive legislation in this area. We support legislation which would penalize the criminal use of firearms and prevent the sale to or possession of guns by convicted felons, fugitives from justice, adjudicated mental incompetents, drug addicts, alcoholics, members of any organization seeking to overthrow the United States Government by force or violence, people who have received dishonorable discharges from the United States Armed Forces or members of any organization on the U.S. Attorney General's list of subversive organizations. We also support legislation to prevent the sale of firearms to minors.

We oppose legislation that would require the registration of firearms, the licensing of their owners, governmental confiscation of privately owned firearms or governmental bans on sales or purchases of firearms.

We support repeal of the Gun Control Act of 1968 because it has been an obvious failure in reducing crime, has seriously inconvenienced American gun owners and dealers, and has burdened the American taxpayer to the extent of millions of dollars in administrative costs alone during this period of severe economic stress.

We realize that firearms control legislation and the right to keep and bear arms are very controversial issues and have been ever since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. In the wake of that tragedy a continuing stream of legislation and editorialization to limit or to abrogate the constitutionally mandated individual right to keep and bear arms has materialized. This activity has been exacerbated by the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and by the attempted slayings of Governor George C. Wallace and Senator John C. Stennis.

In the hearts and minds of all civilized people, these incidents shall ever remain deplorable. However, of great concern is the well intended but nonetheless emotionally generated, misdirected proposals and legislation in the area of firearms control which these tragedies inspired. Ironically, the late President Kennedy himself was an avid shooter and supporter of the right to keep and bear arms. In April, 1960. just seven months before he was elected to the Presidency, Senator John F. Kennedy was interviewed by Guns Magazine and stated that "by calling attention to a well-regulated militia for the security of the Nation, and the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms, our Founding Fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of government tyranny, which gave rise to the second amendment, will ever be a major danger to our Nation. the amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic militarycivilian-relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reasons I believe the second amendment will always be important."

Today, opponents of the right to keep and bear arms assert that the Second Amendment guarantee or recognition of the right applies only to an individual

functioning as a member of a inilitia such as the National Guard. This, we submit, is at best an inaccurate interpretation and is more likely a false assumption. Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 16 of the Constitution of the United States grants Congress the power "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress." Since the concept of a militia including its arming seems to have been thoroughly dealt with in the main body of the Constitution, it is incongruous to ascribe to the Second Amendment similar if not the same objectives. Rather, the right of individuals in their capacity as individuals to keep and bear arms in this free American society is, we believe, the more compelling and correct interpretation of the Second Amendment. For, in addition to being clearly identifiable from the earliest periods of recorded history, we strongly contend that the right of individuals to keep and bear arms in this country is at least as old as is our very freedom.

The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, forthrightly upheld the principle when he declared that "no freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms" in a draft of the Virginia Constitution in June of 1776. In two subsequent drafts, Jefferson wrote that "no freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms within his own lands or tenements." He penned these statements without interconnecting corollary reference to a militia. Just a few weeks later, his arguments for Americans' rights rang out in the Declaration of Independence.

Later, after Americans had won their independence by force of arms, Jefferson objected to the proposed Federal Constitution because it lacked a definition of individual rights and liberties. He and others supported the Constitution only when it was apparent that a bill of rights would be incorporated into it.

Chief theoretician of the bill of rights concept was Jefferson's fellow Virginian, George Mason of Gunston Hall. Mason authored the State's Declaration of Rights and proposed an individual right to keep and bear arms. One of Mason's early public documents was the "Fairfax County Militia Plan for Embodying the People" of February 6, 1775. He clearly indicated that persons individually armed at their own expense constituted a source of personnel from which militia could be drawn. "We do each of us, for ourselves respectively," he wrote, "promise to engage a good Fire-lock in proper Order, & to furnish Ourselves as soon as possible with, & always keep by us, one Pound of Gunpowder, four Pounds of Lead, one Dozen Gun-Flints, & a pair of Bullet-Moulds, with a Cartouch Box, or powder-horn, and Bag of Balls." Mason's statement carried the definitive implication that it is because the people have the individual right to keep and bear arms, are capable of exercising it and in fact do exercise it that an active militia can exist. The mere fact that there is a militia depends on the people's individual right to keep and bear arms.

George Mason was a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention called in 1787 to consider changes in the Articles of Confederation, under which the newly independent States had experienced governmental difficulties. In that Convention, he objected to the lack of a bill of rights in the proposed Federal Constitution.

The Convention did adopt a Federal Constitution without a declaration of individual rights. Mason then represented Fairfax County in the Virginia convention called at Richmond to consider ratification of the Constitution. He opposed ratification on the grounds that unless guarantees of individual rights were included in the document itself, some future government could and might deny such rights.

Mason collaborated with similarly minded statesmen in other places. He corresponded with one John Lamb. an anti-Federalist in New York. In a letter to Lamb written on June 9, 1788 and carried on June 11, 1788, Mason enclosed the handwritten "Proposed Amendments Agreed Upon by the Anti-Federal Committee of Richmond and Dispatched to New York."

That agreement called for a "Declaration or Bill of Rights, asserting and

securing from Encroachment the essential and inalienable Rights of the People, in some such manner as the following.

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"That the People have a Right to keep & bear Arms; that a well regulated Militia, composed of the Body of the People, trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe Defense of a free State."

Here, too, George Mason clearly indicated that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is conceptually prior to a militia.

After the Constitution was adopted, the first Congress met in New York in 1789. Mason corresponded with James Madison, a member of the first Congress. He introduced a twelve article Bill of Rights. Ten of these, including the article on the right to keep and bear arms, were adopted and ratified by the States. The article on the right to keep and bear arms, Amendment Two to the U.S. Constitution, reads: A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

The language of this Amendment carries through the concept underlying the historical development of the concept as found in the writings of Jefferson and Mason. The people have an individual right to keep and bear arms. This is distinct from a militia. Furthermore, it is a right upon which both a well regulated militia and the security of a free State depends. The right to keep and bear arms, then, is necessary to preserve the capability of maintaining freedom.

Complementing an individual's Second Amendment right in the United States Constitution are the Constitutions of over 75% of the States which specifically recognize and guarantee the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. These States proclaim the right in the following manner: Alabama, Connecticut, Michigan, Washington-Every citizen (Michigan, "person," Washington, “individual citizen") "in defense of himself and the State." (Emphasis Supplied)

Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming-Citizens, the people or "all men" (Kentucky) in “defense of themselves and the State." (Emphasis Supplied)

New Mexico, Ohio, Utah-"The people... for their security and defense." (Emphasis Supplied)

Georgia, Rhode Island-"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Colorado, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma-Every citizen or "any person" (Colorado, Montana) "in defense of his home, person and property." (Emphasis Supplied)

Constitutions of Arkansas, Kansas, Maine and Massachusetts indicate their people have a right to keep and bear arms for the "common defense." Alaska, Hawaii, Louisiana, North and South Carolina follow the wording of the U.S. Constitution. New York does this by statute. This year, New Hampshire adopted a right to keep and bear arms amendment in honor of the bicentennial. In recent years, the voters of two more States, Illinois and Virginia, adopted constitutional provisions guaranteeing their citizens the right to keep and bear arms.

Of special importance is the language in the various State Constitutions, some of which is emphasized above. The great majority by State Constitutions guaranteeing the individual the right to keep and bear arms do so for purposes of the individual's self defense and often that of his family and property as well as for the protection of the State. Thus it can be inferred that these State Constitutional provisions, so often structured so as to be in harmony with the Constitution of the United States, have from the earliest times of our history to the present day provided us with some compelling insights into how the Second Amendment has been perceived and implemented. Recourse to judicial analysis for a definitive interpretation of the Second Amendment is not the elucidative experience one might expect. As Robert A. Sprecher in his winning entry in the American Bar Association's 1965 Samuel Pool Weaver Constitutional Law Essay Competition entitled "The Lost Amendment" states, that with the exception of The Third Amendment. "no amendment has received less judicial attention than the second." Thus, Mr. Sprecher, in support of his thesis that renewed vitality should be accorded the Second Amendment and the individual's right to keep and bear arms, relies primarily on historical analysis in a manner similar to our statement.

Finding only four cases in which the Supreme Court had the occasion to directly construe the Second Amendment, the Committee concludes that the Court's rulings in this area have been narrowly drawn and are obviously quite dated. Of great significance is the fact that the High Court has not reviewed a Second Amendment case since 1939 when it declared in the United States v. Miller, 301 U.S. 174 (1939) that the weapon in question had no reasonable relationship to the preservation of effectiveness of a "well regulated militia;" therefore, the Second Amendment did not apply. Construing this decision, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Cases v. United States, 131 F.2d 916 (1942), certiorari denied 319 U.S. 770 (1943) in upholding the constitutionality of the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, stated:

"Apparently, then, under the Second Amendment, the federal government can limit the keeping and bearing of arms by a single individual as well as by a group of individuals, but it cannot prohibit the possession or use of any weapon which has any reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." (Emphasis Supplied)

The Cases court seemingly sounded a challenge to the modern-day efficacy of the Miller rule by speculating that Congress did not have the power to regulate "the possession or use by private persons not present or prospective members of any military unit, of distinctly military arms such as machine guns, trench mortars, anti-tank or anti-aircraft guns, even though under the circumstances surrounding such possession or use it would be inconceivable that a person could have any legitimate reason for having such a weapon." Interestingly enough, the Bill of Rights in many other areas has been considerably strengthened in recent years by judicial decision. Commencing with Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925) numerous Court decisions have eroded on an Amendment by Amendment basis the 1833 decision in Barron v. Mayor of Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243 (1833) which held that the Bill of Rights restrained the Federal Government only and not the states. See Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961); Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963); Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1 (1964). However, various other courts have concluded that the Second Amendment does not restrict state action. See Hardison v. State, 437 P.2d 868 (1968); Eckert v. City of Philadelphia, 329 F.Supp. (1971). It therefore is not unreasonable to project that the Supreme Court is awaiting the appropriate case to definitively clarify this area by ruling on the scope and meaning of the second Amendment. Furthermore, considering the compelling historical evidence available and the ruminations of the First Circuit in Cases, supra, it is not inconceivable that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms would be declared absolute, immune from state infringement by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment and unfettered by any reasonable relationship to a militia.

Departing for the moment from the still life of statutory and dated case law, we maintain that our position finds further justification in the ordinary course of recent events. Day after day, newspapers throughout the United States report numerous instances in which the presence of privately owned firearms helped prevent murder, rape or assault upon gun owners or others. or theft of their property. Nevertheless, despite the obvious crime deterrence of private firearms ownership by law-abiding citizens and the dissuading effect on some would-be criminals of the possibility of meeting a law-abiding armed citizen during the perpetration of a criminal act, advocates of restrictive gun control measures such as firearms registration, gun owner licensing, governmental confiscation of privately owned firearms continually barrage the public with the fallacy that privately owned firearms are a causal factor in the crime problem.

At this particular time, most attention is being given to handguns. We are frequently told that over half the murders in the United States are committed with the use of handguns and that there are at least 40 million handguns in private hands in the United States is a sad commentary on the state of our American society. However, impartial scrutiny of relevant statistics does not confirm the validity of this unending parade of horribles. The F.B.I. Uniform Crime Reports for 1973, the most recent year of official record,

indicates that of the estimated 19,510 criminal homicides in the United States, 53% were committed with the use of handguns. This represents an actual figure of 10,340. Incredibly, therefore, of all the handguns in the Nation, only .000259% were involved in a criminal homicide. In other words, approximately 99.999741% of the 40 million handguns were not! One cannot help but remark that the American automobile appears to constitute a more clear and present danger.

In a speech delivered on April 6, 1975 by the Honorable Edward M. Levi, Attorney General of the United States, to the Law Enforcement Executives Conference in Washington, D.C., it was pointed out that the number of handguns in the United States increases at the rate of 2.5 million per year. Given the annual rates of increase of criminal homicides in recent years, the percentage of handguns used in criminal homicide is constantly decreasing. Furthermore, assuming the annual increases in handguns posited by the Attorney General, criminal homicides committed with handguns would have to increase 411% or to an actual figure of 42,500 to have involved .001 percent of the handguns in the United States in such homicides.

A further analysis of the F.B.I. Uniform Crime Report for 1973, indicates that the murder and non-negligent homicide rate per 100,000 population is more than a full point higher in States with restrictive handgun laws than it is in the Nation as a whole.

The average homicide rate per 100,000 for States with restrictive handgun control laws is 10.5. The national rate is 9.3.

A table of the restrictive handgun control States and their murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rates is set forth here.

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Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina all have a permit system for purchasing a handgun. (Massachusetts now also requires a license for carrying any gun, but did not for the period covered by these statistics.)

Illinois requires a governmentally issued identification card for the acquisition or possession of any firearm, pellet gun or ammunition.

New York requires a license to possess a handgun.

Hawaii requires the registration of firearms.

Mississippi requires the registration of handguns.

Michigan requires handgun safety inspection and certification.

South Carolina and Texas prohibit the carrying of a handgun on the person, concealed or openly, with no provision for a license to carry.

Although the law in some of the 39 other States places fewer regulations on handguns than the law in others, none are as severely regulative as any in the group of 11 restrictive handgun control States.

In addition, the average homicide rate per 100,000 population in the 39 nonrestrictive handgun control States is 7.01, over three points lower than the average rate in the 11 restrictive handgun control States, and over two points lower than the national rate.

A table of those 39 States and their murder and non-negligent manslaughter rates is set forth here.

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