Limit Ammunition To Control Hand Guns


Restrict Ammunition To Management Hand Weapons

April 30, 1975

Those that would ban hand weapons would possibly properly think about the previous riddle: “Which comes first, the rooster or the egg?”

A number of cities have adopted laws prohibiting pistols, revolvers and the so-called “Saturday Night time Specials” in a effort to halt the hovering crime fee.

Up to now, the trouble has been like making an attempt to empty the ocean with a tea spoon. The subsequent city over sells low cost weapons, and no questions requested.

Congress, subsequently, appears about prepared to contemplate the controversial proposal significantly. Actually solely a nation-wide ban has any probability to be efficient.

I assist hand gun laws, however oppose makes an attempt to curtail shoulder weapons.

Pocket weapons, able to being hid, are quick vary weapons of shock and vengeance. Rifles, nonetheless, are carried overtly. They’re helpful for sport and protection towards armies of invasion.

Gun management is impractical merely due to the benefit with which hand weapons might be constructed, transported and hid.

Which brings us to the rooster and egg puzzle.

Precisely three years in the past on this column, I prompt that we quit making an attempt to restrict the gun and strategy the issue by means of the extra weak route of ammunition.

Gun management advocates dismissed the thought as “simplistic.” The late Congressman Frank Bow circulated the column to a couple gun-control legislators however acquired an detached response.

Now comes an Illinois residents’ group referred to as the Committee for Handgun Management, Inc., which is in search of to power the US. Authorities to ban the sale of hand gun ammunition as a way of controlling low cost hand weapons.

The group has petitioned the brand new federal Client Product Security Fee to ban ammunition on grounds it’s hazardous, and that the fee has jurisdiction over hazardous substances.

That is the hand gun committee’s second try and power the fee. A 12 months in the past the fee dominated that banning ammunition would quantity to a “again door” ban available weapons, a direct violation of regulation that established the fee.

However the hand gun committee has gained a court docket swimsuit requiring the fee to rethink, which it’s now doing.

Two months in the past the product security fee requested the general public to touch upon the proposal to ban ammunition. “A number of hundred thousand” replies have flooded in.

Finally, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom might resolve the problem.

Whereas hand weapons might be manufactured and smuggled simply, the manufacturing of bullet-quality gunpowder requires extremely developed know-how.

As well as, the manufacture of a shell casing requires a big, costly, extremely correct stamping press. Solely a only a few factories, in the US are able to making primer shells which sportsmen typically fill with commercially manufactured gunpowder.

In brief, there are only some sources of provide for powder and shells. The provision ought to be comparatively straightforward to control.

Minimize off the availability of ammunition, and hand weapons will rust into quaint souvenirs.

Rifle-calibre ammunition might proceed to be made accessible readily in {hardware} and sports activities shops.

Revolver-calibre cartridges, nonetheless, may very well be furnished solely to the navy and regulation enforcement authorities. These with a professional want for revolver shells for his or her freely-owned – however registered – hand weapons must receive them from the police after optimistic identification and finger printing. Purchases is perhaps restricted to 5 shells, and empty shells may very well be returned for alternative.

Thus, these residents genuinely needing a hand gun for cover or different professional wants wouldn’t be denied an “equalizer”.

Criminals, after all, would nonetheless receive each pistols and Ammunition from overseas or from different felony sources. But, we should attempt to management hand weapons SENSIBLY even when the percentages are as hopeless as they appear to be.

In controlling hand weapons we have to be cautious that we do not merely disarm the citizen whereas leaving weapons within the palms of gangsters.

Additionally, we should not abrogate our constitutional proper to “hold and bear arms.” The way in which the world goes nowadays, this proper might not be as out of date and educational because the gun management fanatics would have us imagine.


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