Firearms Legislation

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9 a.m., in studio A, WETV-TV, channel 30, 740 Bismark Road, Atlanta, Ga.; Hon. John Conyers, Jr. [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.

Present: Representatives Conyers and Mann.

Also present: Maurice A. Barboza, counsel; Timothy J. Hart, assistant counsel; and Constantine J. Gekas, associate counsel.

Mr. CONYERS. The subcommittee will come to order.

Today, the Subcommittee on Crime of the House Committtee of the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, meets in the city of Atlanta, Ga., to continue hearings on firearms legislation.

We are very pleased to be in the city, we have had tremendous cooperation on the part of the mayor of the city of Atlanta, the police commissioner, and channel 30 television. We are pleased that these hearings will be viewed by many who would not otherwise have access to these proceedings. We come to this city in the second last of a series of regional hearings which have moved from one end of the country to the other.

We are here in Atlanta to examine several very important questions. The first question is the amount of crime and accidents that occur involving firearms. The Atlanta homicide rate, which will be discussed by the mayor of the city, is one of the highest in the country. But more than that, Georgia is one of four Southern States that apparently is the source for many of the handguns that have been recovered in New York. There is almost a southern connection that has become very important to the investigations that have been conducted by the staff of this subcommittee.

In addition, there are some other fundamental questions that seem to be as overriding here as they were to the hearings conducted throughout the United States.

First and foremost, what is the impact of this increased amount of weaponry, almost like an arms race, that is going on within the United States.

Second, what does that have to do with the question of increasing violence that characterizes life in America in the 1970's. It is out of these concerns that Congress has been moved to reexamine its Federal legislation. Attempts are being made to relate to the State, (1889)

and local law enforcement authorities who have important responsibilities in coordinating firearms regulation and the safety of its citizens with the various governmental agencies and localities. And, so, we think that the time has come for perhaps new legislation at the national level.

When we leave Atlanta, we are going to be privileged to hear from the Attorney General of the United States, the head of the Justice Department, Hon. Edward H. Levy. We will hear also from General Maxwell Rich of the National Rifle Association, and a number of others as we move toward a legislative result in the House of Representatives.

Here in Atlanta, we were privileged to have received the testimony of Hon. Larry McDonald, a member of Congress from the State of Georgia. That testimony will be incorporated into the record. Our leadoff witness is one of the outstanding Mayors of the United States, and a personal friend of mine, Hon. Maynard Jackson, who since 1974, has headed up list after list of firsts.

He is well known in terms of developing an articulate and sympathetic view toward the relationship of major city problems with the Federal Government and, on the question of firearms regulation, he has indeed distinguished himself with his precise understanding of this problem that is before us.

So, I am very honored to say hello again to the Mayor of the city of Atlanta. We have Mayor Jackson, your prepared statement, and it will be incorporated to the record at this point. That will allow you to proceed in your own way.

[The prepared statements of Hon. Larry McDonald and Hon. Maynard Jackson follow:]

STATEMENT OF HON. LARRY MCDONALD (D.-Ga.)

Those who would disarm America, right down to the last target pistol, are once more in full cry through the halls of Congress. This is a determined campaign, already more than ten years old, and it is aimed at destroying one of the most important guarantees of the Bill of Rights. Those of us fighting federal gun-control proposals are continually confronted by opponents who want either to ignore or deliberately misinterpret the clear meaning of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

It is important to remember that the first Amendments, the Bill of Rights, were added because many Americans, even back in 1789, were concerned lest the federal government become too powerful. The Bill of Rights not only affirms certain rights of the people, and of the states, which shall not be infringed by the federal government, but through the Ninth Amendment it stands as a reminder that "the enumeration . . . of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The point here is that these rights existed before the Constitution was written. They are not rights which are granted to us by the federal government, but rights with which the Constitution forbids the federal government to interfere.

Thus the Second Amendment does not "grant" the right to keep and bear arms, but protects it from usurpation, declaring: "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." Note that the Amendment doesn't say this right may not be abolished. It goes farther. It says it may not even be infringed. That is, this right is so important it may not be tampered with, or trespassed upon, or transgressed, or chiseled away by any method or means Washington might devise. The Constitution is unequivocal on this point.

The right to keep and bear arms has deep roots in English common law. As an individual right, it is obviously related to the common-law right of self

defense. As a "states' right," it represents an element of sovereignty which the states retained when the federal union was created. A militia, which in historical context means the entire adult male citizenry, may be thought of as a means of self-defense for the states and their various communities. Thus the armed citizen is at once subject to being called upon as a vital last line of defense against crime, federal tyranny, and foreign invasion.

It is my sworn duty as a Member of Congress to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. The Second Amendment is part of that Constitution and must be defended as vigorously as the right to free speech. That is why I have introduced H.R. 3326, proposing the repeal of the Gun Control Act of 1968. Such "gun control" as is necessary is properly within the police powers of the individual states. But the federal government has no more right to legislate gun control than it has a right to legislate speech control or religion control or press control. To permit the one is to invite federal control of any or all of the others and strikes directly at the heart of American liberty. I am proud to support the constitutional guarantee of the rights to worship as we choose, to speak freely, publish without fear, assemble peaceably without harassment, and to keep and bear arms. I am willing to trust the people with free speech, a free press, and the right to keep and bear arms. I am here to defend their rights as well as my own. And I am willing to accept and live with the knowledge that, should this government of ours become unbearable, it will find itself in trouble with those armed citizens out there who love liberty and think the Constitution of the United States is worth fighting for. That's what the Second Amendment is all about.

What is it that gun-control proponents are out to "control"?

It is estimated that about fifty million Americans-one in four-perhaps one in three who are of age-possess their own guns. The number of firearms in private hands is simply unknown. This fact, alone, horrifies the gun-controllers. All are agreed that the number must be in excess of one hundred million; perhaps as high as two hundred million, as my colleague Representative Steven Symms of Idaho suggested in his recent and brilliant testimony against restrictive gun laws.

This year's objective seems to be limited to handguns, in hopes that so limited an objective will prove attainable. If it is not, then the gun-controllers hope for at least a precedent-setting ban on whatever hardware they choose to dub a "Saturday Night Special," the object which otherwise intelligent "Liberals" blame for street crime. The number of handguns is not known. There might be twenty-four million; there might be as many of forty million pistols and revolvers in private hands. Handguns are thought to be about a third of the total-whatever the total number of firearms may be.

Allegedly in order to control the acts of our criminal minority, the gun-controllers demand that tens of millions of law-abiding Americans be restricted, harassed, and eventually deprived of their constitution right as well as their legal property. In defiance of all logic, such gun-controllers express a far greater fear of those tens of millions of Americans who are not criminals than they do of the hoodlums actively terrorizing our cities. The reason is that their attitudes and opinions are not the product of logic but of ideology.

The strategy of this year's gun-control campaign is evident. Those in charge realize, from scarring defeats in the past, that they cannot have the whole loaf-complete registration, followed by complete confiscation. They have settled upon partial registration and partial confiscation as their objectives. All fire is to be directed onto "handguns." The fallback position, I believe, will be a ban on those mythical "Saturday Night Specials" which we are told leap out of dark alleys, aim themselves at passers-by, and pull their own triggers. If "Liberal" demonology is to be believed, they may even carry off wallets. "Liberals" simply hate being reminded that it is not guns but people who kill people. In the tradition of "compromise," Congressmen opposed to the most oppressive gun-control measures which have been introduced so far are being asked to "be reasonable." They are being asked to "compromise" by giving the gun-controllers, if not half a loaf, then at least a quarter of a loaf. After all, how many votes can anyone win by defending the mythical "Saturday Night Special"?

Well, we Conservatives in the Congress are not interested in helping the guncontrollers to achieve even their most minimal objectives. We know-as the radical proponents of gun control know-that any law which delivers up to the

bureaucracy the authority to decide that handguns must be a certain size, or cost more than a certain price, or melt above a certain temperature, is merely a device to reduce the supply of handguns as a precedent for confiscation.

Some of us in the Congress do not propose to compromise at all. Tests have shown that many inexpensive pistols are quite worthy products, and there is no reason to deny firearms to all but those who can afford the expensive models. As a matter of fact, most murder victims are poorer people, often black, living in the large cities. Conservatives would no more deny them the right of self-defense than they would deny that right to any other citizen. The collectivists pushing this ugly business are apparently not only elitists but racists as well.

The continuing attempt to ban handgun sales by having the Consumer Product Safety Commission declare ammunition "hazardous" is typical of the underhanded methods being employed by these anti-gun collectivists. They will go to any lengths to get their way. Since they consider Congress bothersome, they will try, as in this case, to make an end run via the federal courts and the bureaucracy. Pay attention to how it works. A small group of people with a fancy name and a tax-free income petition a federal court, demanding_that the federal judge tell the C.P.S.C. to see whether ammunition is "hazardous" and therefore subject to its control. The Commission, of course, has had no trouble in the past in finding baby cribs and tricycles hazardous, so the tactic should have worked easily.

However, opposition to gun control is so strong that the Consumer Product Safety Commission found its phone lines jammed with calls, opposing this backdoor approach. Congress, too, has been annoyed, since it instructed the Consumer Product Safety Commission from the beginning to keep its fingers out of the anti-gun campaign.

The fact that the whole scheme involved handgun ammunition, which is no more "hazardous" than long-gun ammunition, shows that it was part of this year's orchestrated drive for handgun restrictions. It was not spontaneous, it was part of the program which just happens to include anti-handgun propaganda turning up in various television police dramas, the usual biased "documentaries," and assorted horror tales in national magazines. We have been through this so often before that we find ourselves wondering who will be assassinated this time.1

The Consumer Product Safety Commission hardly has to remind us that there are dangers in having guns around the house. We have to be careful of them, just as we must be careful of ladders, knives, open flames, electrical wiring, ammonia, iodine, and children's toys, any and all of which are to be found around most houses, and which have been the cause of many accidental deaths. Fortunately, no one has proposed registration and confiscation of these items and substances as a solution-although we will apparently have to restrain the hand of the C.P.S.C. safety crafts. Needless to say, I am supporting pending legislation to prevent the zealots of the Commission from banning ammunition now that they have discovered that cartridges can be placed in firearms and fired.

The figures show that accidental deaths from gunshot wounds have since 1903 remained remarkably constant in number, while due to increases in population the rate of such deaths has been cut in half. Approximately twenty-five hundred people die each year due to accidents with firearms. Each of these deaths, of course, represents a great personal tragedy. But let us put the matter in perspective.

Fifty times as many people die from other types of accidents. Automobiles, alone, account for well over fifty thousand deaths a year-twenty times as many as firearms. Highway police estimate that about half of these auto failures are due to what may be unkindly but accurately described as drunken

1 That is not a joking remark. Every time you have to go through all the rigamarole required to buy a box of .22 cartridges, remember the Communist who killed Senator Robert Kennedy and brought on the Gun Control Act of 1968. The nonsense about .22 ammunition was kept in the law at the insistence of the late Representative Emanuel Celler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, because "a .22 bullet killed Senator Kennedy." The attempted assassination of Governor George Wallace of Alabama in May, 1972, unleashed a similar torrent of gun-control propaganda which seems to have been all ready to go. Governor Wallace failed to cooperate. Not only did he refuse to die, but he spoke up against the calculated attempt to use yet another "lone assassin" plot to ram through yet another gun-control law, which neither he nor his supporters wanted to see.

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Firearms Legislation: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Crime of the ...