Word: guns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Quite properly, many observers note that changing gun laws will not help much as long as people yield to the violent impulses that seize them. "Cain and not Abel, is the father of man," notes Chicago Psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim. Half a century ago in The Golden Bough, Anthropologist Sir James Frazer discerned "a solid layer of savagery beneath the surface of society, unaffected by the superficial changes of religion and culture." To cope with what Sir James described as this "standing menace to civilization," many authorities suggest that a way must be found to control aggression and, as Detroit Psychiatrist...
Even the Bedouins. Gun controls obviously cannot stop crime or wanton killing, and no one claims that they can. Laws can be circumvented. At the 1957 Apalachin "crime convention," twelve of the 35 New York residents collared by police were "clean" under the provisions of the state's tough Sullivan law?they had pistol permits. Unless an amateur psychiatrist in a gun shop or a police station had recognized him as a paranoid schizophrenic, Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower sniper who killed or wounded 46 people two years ago, would have been able to assemble his lethal armory despite strict...
...effective, gun-control legislation should be rational and uniform. Otherwise, as New Jersey's Governor Richard Hughes complained last week, states with strong laws will invariably be "subverted" by those with weak ones. Michigan residents who want to avoid buying a pistol permit?and having their background checked?simply drive across the Ohio border to Toledo, where guns are sold even at the candy counter of a sleazy hamburger stand. Massachusetts police in a ten-year study traced 87% of the guns used in local crimes to purchases in neighboring states where no waiting period or background investigation was required...
High on the list of reforms sought by many gun-control advocates is a system of dual registration, similar to the one for autos. The driver is licensed, and his vehicle is registered separately. The same principle could apply to guns ?licensing for the owner, registration for each of his firearms. It would be a nuisance, to be sure, but, given the destructive power of guns, it would hardly be an outrageous imposition in an industrial society that demands registration of cars, businesses, private planes, dogs and marriages, as well as prescriptions for many mild drugs. Even the Bedouins...
Some authorities have suggested that every firearm sold be "fingerprinted" in advance by test-firing to determine its ballistic pattern. In the age of the computer, such distinctive patterns could be kept on file without too much difficulty. With gun owners carrying a license and a registration card for every weapon, ammunition could also be registered and sold only to those with proper credentials. Such all-embracing registration would aid police in both detection and prevention of crimes. Finally, proponents of gun-law reform argue that, just as prospective drivers must undergo examinations, the applicant for a license to possess...