Regarding gun control: in the 1960's

Regarding gun control:


 "A great many men seemed to regard all proposals for righter controls as a challenge to their virility. The powerful National Rifle Association urged it's half million members to write Washington, and it's lobbyists went to work on Congressman with the spacious reasoning that "it's the man that kills, not the rifle".


 They demanded the passage of another (Hicken looper) bill, which would merely prevent the importing of guns bot made by American firms.


 Katzenbach pointed out in vain that the association was not protecting sportsmen's rights, but the profit's of commercial gun dealers.


 "Anti Gun Extremists are at It Again" Field and Stream warned it's readers and Outdoor Life declared that "Gun owners should switch to the offense".


 They did: In Texas they were esp militant.
 Elsewhere in the country courts took a benign view of some 20,000 gun control laws enacted on municipal and state levels.


 In Dallas an ordinance restricting the possession of weapons had been struck down by a local judge in 1962 on the ground that it would have been "an unauthorized invasion of a natural right the citizens of this state have never relinquished to their rulers".
 Presumably, "their rulers" meant the government of the United States and the assassination didn't change the feeling.
 Once his arm had healed, Governor Connolly called upon Texas Congressional delegation to oppose the Dodd bill, and Texas Republicans, meeting in Dallas, passed a resolution opposing any limitation on the right of private individuals to to buy and use guns".


 Death of a President November 1963, author and Historian William Manchester, Epilogue Legend, page 632

Regarding President Kennedy's assassination and gun control

Regarding President Kennedy's assassination and gun control:




 "In the wake of the assassination the pressure for such legislation (small arms control) seemed irresistible: A Gallup poll revealed that 8 out of 10 Americans favored new laws requiring police permits of weapon buyers. Robert Kennedy asked Congress to outlaw the mail order traffic, supportive mail engulfed the Hill, and in the weeks after the funeral Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut introduced a sensible bill to ban mail order sales, bar weapons from.abroad unsuitable for sporting use, forbid sales to people under twenty one, and require all purchasers to identity themselves so police could later trace them.
 The American Bar Association endorsed it and was ignored. The Director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons pointed out "After all, cars have to be registered and drivers licensed" and was unheard.




 Indeed, though 18 such measures were introduced on the Hill , none of the gun laws went off.




 The United States remained the only modern nation in the world without firm regulation of the sale and use of firearms -- Oswald couldn't have assassinated Kennedy in Russia -- and in 1964 some 600,000 cheap firearms were brought into the country."




 Death of a President November 1963, Epilogue Legend, pages 631-632, author William Manchester (1st edition, 1967)