Mr. BATTIN. I have some statistics here in front of me that indicate with respect to the active narcotic addicts in the United States between December 31, 1963, and December 31, 1964, that there has been a substantial increase of 5,593 addicts in the State of New York.

Mr. REISMAN. Yes.

Mr. BATTIN. How do you relate the Federal law which is nationally applied and your State law and say that there has been any deterrent? Mr. REISMAN. I think what you are trying to compare are oranges and apples. The two are completely dissimilar. The type of Federal legislation in the narcotics field is of a different nature. What you really have are two types of similar narcotics laws operating.

The Federal laws and the State laws are more or less the same and an arrest, for example, can be made practically under one or the other without any distinction. In the firearms field the Federal acts would serve as the base under which New York's laws could operate more effectively.

If your Federal laws are strengthened to prevent the mail-order shipments and if it is strengthened in terms of out-of-State personal purchases of firearms, then we think that New York's gun laws will show a marked impact on the crime situation.

Mr. BATTIN. I disagree with your premise that we are comparing apples and oranges. We are comparing a system, and that is what I am attempting to do. We do have strict Federal laws. You do have strict narcotics laws in the State of New York, but yet the use continues to go up.

Certainly there is no indication from what you said that if you have a Federal gun statute the use of firearms won't continue to increase in the State of New York, or any other State as far as that is concerned. Mr. REISMAN. We are seeing at the present time throughout the country, and indeed throughout the world, notwithstanding our best legislative efforts, a continual rise in all crime rates and one cannot sepculate with any degree of validity on the impact one way or another of such laws.

I don't know what it would be like in New York if, for example, there was no Federal narcotics law, whether our rates would be higher and so forth. The narcotics problem of course is an entirely different problem than the gun legislative problem.

Narcotic addicts gravitate to the city of New York and the State of New York because of the anonymity they are able to secure there as against the attention given to them by their presence in smaller communities.

Mr. BATTIN. Except that it would seem again by comparison with a chart given to me by the Bureau of Narcotics that there is a great relationship between the crime rate and the narcotics arrests.

Mr. REISMAN. Yes, that is so.

Mr. BATTIN. And, secondly, and again by comparison, I think England has perhaps the most restrictive laws dealing with firearms of any country in the free world. We were told when we opened the hearings that the crime rate in England, with the use of weapons, has continued to rise. The English Government prohibits the ownership of weapons and periodically the British Government will ask anybody who owns a firearm to turn it in with no questions asked as to the source of origin.

Mr. REISMAN. That is just about what we have in New York State, an amnesty period.

Mr. BATTIN. So here again we have very strict laws, but yet the use of weapons is on the rise as far as the crime rate is concerned. Mr. REISMAN. Well, we don't know though how much more of a rise there would have been if the gun laws had not been that strict. We just don't know, for example, in England how many arrests were made for illegal possession of the weapons before they had been used, for example, in the great train robbery. That is the point.

It is your decision as to how you want to use statistics, but without the existence of these strigent gun laws in England how much more of a rise would they have? I don't know. The FBI statistics suggest that in those areas where you have stringent gun laws your rate of homocide is lower in this country than where you don't have them. How about those countries where there is no gun restrictions? I don't know what the rate of crime would be there.

Mr. BATTIN. Are you acquainted with a study that has been done in Wisconsin, the date of which is July 30, 1960, which deals with the problem of crime, weapons, and regulations. The general consensus of it is that nothing has been proved by laws as far as the incidence of crime is concerned.

Mr. REISMAN. Unfortunately, we are in an area of speculation. We must depend to a large extent on our accumulated experience and our professional judgment, and I have stated what our professional judgment is.

Mr. BATTIN. This I appreciate, but we are asked to pass laws not upon emotion, but based on fact.

Mr. REISMAN. Of course.

Mr. BATTIN. And there is quite a difference. I would think it would be interesting on a per capita basis to study what the difference in the crime rate is in a State like New York that has its Sullivan law compared to a State that has no regulation on the purchase or ownership of any firearm.

Mr. REISMAN. Those studies have been made. New York, for example, per capita ranks 18th in crime rates as against similar type cities, if any can be compared, of course, with the complexities in New York City. I don't have those statistics with me, but communities which have practically no gun legislation rank much higher.

Mr. BATTIN. I would make a personal observation that in my State, which is Montana, and having been in law enforcement prior to the time I came to Congress, it seemed to be somewhat of a deterrent to a would-be burglar to come into somebody's home if he thought there might be a gun in that home that would be used to prevent his illegal entry.

Mr. REISMAN. I have no doubt of that in the State of Montana, and that is, of course, your problem, and I appreciate the scope of it. I am talking narrowly about the city of New York. I certainly agree that would be prowlers- they know that the woman who is left alone in the house in a rural community is armed with a shotgun with "double O buck"-will think twice about attempting to molest them.

I am talking, of course, about the city of New York where that deterrent though is of no consequence.

Mr. BATTIN. I would like your opinion then on some of the very unfortunate reports that come to us through the national press of people being molested, in fact murdered, in the streets where they were heard by others and where no attempt was made to go to their aid or their rescue.

Mr. REISMAN. Yes, shocking.

Mr. BATTIN. I wonder if there might not have been a different situation, say in an apartment, where a law-abiding citizen hearing a call for help and having available a weapon that he could have used not only in defense of person, but in defense of himself, might not have come to the aid or rescue of the individual.

Mr. REISMAN. Perhaps so. I am inclined to think that he might have done more harm than good, when you recognize the problem of city streets, when you recognize, as indeed you must, having lived in Montana and been in law enforcement, the enormous degree of skill required before someone can use a handgum with any degree of proficiency. We have had instances in the past of persons in good faith attempting to come to the aid of another with either a .22 rifle or a pistol and the ultimate result was some innocent individual was hurt. It seems to me if there is a struggle on the city streets that a weapon, except in the hands of a police officer, is of little effectiveness, that is, a firearm.

Even police officers are trained in that kind of a situation not to utilize a firearm first, but as a last resort. We have the continual problem of 8 million people living in close contact.

Of course we have the problem of ricochets and the like, but apathy is a state of mind; and when you find there are 15 or 20 able-bodied persons standing around watching an incident where a police officer is being beaten to the ground by a man holding a club and they don't come to his rescue, it seems to me if all of them were armed with a submachinegun they would not come to the rescue if that was their state of mind.

Mr. BATTIN. Do you think we can legislate against apathy?

Mr. REISMAN. No, you cannot legislate against apathy. Apathy is a problem that is affecting much of the community, and it is incredible that we are on the horns of a dilemma. On one hand, in the Halls of Congress we are doing everything we can to help our neighbor and, on the other hand, the individual citizen considers that he has no interest in his neighborhood or in the other person who walks the street. I don't think you can legislate in the area of apathy.

Mr. BATTIN. You did make a point in your formal presentation that it was your opinion that the proposed legislation presently before this committee would not keep a gun out of the hands of the professional criminal.

Mr. REISMAN. Probably not, probably not.

Mr. BATTIN. He doesn't abide by the laws, anyway.

Mr. REISMAN. It is not only that he doesn't abide by them, but as long as there is a source of illegal weapons somewhere in this country, through his underground and underworld contacts he will obtain them. There is no doubt about it.

But I am talking about the relatively unskilled. I am not talking about the crime syndicate. Their problems are different. I am talking about the ordinary relatively do it yourself criminal, which is the one we are concerned with. The man who, for example, wakes up one Friday morning (and that is the problem, Fridays), and finds that he has no money to buy drugs and he knows that Friday is payroll day, that there is a fair amount of cash in various stores, and is able to obtain a weapon with relative ease.

It is that area that we are concerned with. It is that man who is responsible for a substantial amount of the robberies and other crimes of violence and the homicides in the city of New York.

Mr. BATTIN. The Federal statutes right now prohibit a manufacturer from mailing into the State of New York any handguns to individuals. They have to go in through a dealer.

Mr. REISMAN. Yes. You are talking about the manufacturer, yes. The manufacturer is not usually our problem. Our problem usually comes to some extent from the fact that your Federal dealers' license is $1, as you well know, and there are no regulations or supervision over who may have it and once you have that $1 license you can receive concealable weapons through the mails where they are not marked as firearms.

The problem is not acute where a recognized dealer in another State ships by railway express to a purchaser or a prospective purchaser in New York City. Assuming, for example, one of our citizens in New York decides to buy a pistol from a west coast dealer, most of the time of course the west coast dealer will make sure to verify the fact that he has sent along the necessary forms to authorize the shipment.

Some do not for one reason or another, inadvertently or intentionally However, if that gun is shipped to the individual through railway express it is marked "firearm" and under the State law that weapon is not delivered until the police department is notified and the detective assigned from the ballistics bureau is there when the package is picked up, and of course if the package contains a concealable weapon the package is refused, if the consignee has no permit.

We have had many, many of those instances, but the problem is the mail where the packages are not properly marked or railway express where those shipments are not marked "firearms."

Mr. BATTIN. Has your department made any effort to have the Secretary of the Treasury or his designee promulgate rules and regulations which he presently has the authority to do, to stop the person who buys a $1 license and becomes a dealer in firearms?

Mr. REISMAN. We have had no more than informal conversations with them. Perhaps that is an area in which we should have done more, but, as you well know, there are thousands of people in New York State as well as in other States who have the $1 license.

Most of them have it simply to obtain the usual trade discounts. They print up 20 sheets of letter paper and they are a dealer.

Mr. BATTIN. The problem that concerns some of us on the committee is the failure of the Government agencies to use the present statutes for enforcement of the present laws.

Mr. REISMAN. Very sound observation.

Mr. BATTIN. I am not personally convinced that a full effort has been made by the Treasury Department to use the power that they presently have in the regulation of the dealer's license particularly in seeing to it that the license does go in fact to a legitimate dealer. That was the intent of Congress I am sure.

I have no further questions, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. KING (presiding). Any further questions? Mr. Betts.

Mr. BETTS. I think you have given a very excellent statement of your position, Commissioner. You dealt in generalities without referring to any specific bill before us.

Are you acquainted with Mr. King's bill?

Mr. REISMAN. No, I am not. That bill was not forwarded to me. I heard about it this morning. I understand it has some different provisions. I regret to say I am not familiar with that.

Mr. BETTS. Are you acquainted with Mr. Casey's bill?

Mr. REISMAN. I may be acquainted with them without knowing them by name.

Mr. BETTS. In general it would provide a mandatory penalty I think of 25 years imprisonment if one has committed a felony while in possession of a weapon. What would you say about that?

Mr. REISMAN. We now have legislation in New York, have had it for many, many years, where conviction will result in increased penalties if the person committed the crime while armed.

Our experience with those laws as well as mandatory laws is they do not have the deterrent effect that they are intended to have. They are logically sound as deterrent measures, but in the practical enforcement of the laws they just do not do the job. They do not for many reasons, including the incredible volume of cases going through the

courts.

You have the problem to some extent that juries will not convict in many cases where they are aware indirectly of mandatory penalties and so forth. It has not worked, for example, to any great extent in the narcotics field where you have your mandatory provisions and mandatory penalties.

The deterrent impact is only one part of it. It is somewhat helpful, but there must also be the prevention aspect through the limitation of the traffic.

Mr. BETTS. I raise that because I had an experience last evening. I was at the ball game and a foul ball came over in our vicinity. A man went after it and he fell down to the floor getting it in the stadium. He took off his coat to see how he hurt himself and he had a pistol strapped to his side, which amazed everybody.

It caused a little bit of panic around us. The thought occurred to me there were no laws which would have prevented him from getting that pistol. It also occurred to me, supposing he hadn't gotten the ball and went berserk and started using the weapon.

It seems to me maybe the thought of a mandatory stiff penalty might have deterred him a little bit. Is that correct?

Mr. REISMAN. The problem has been the history of the administration of criminal justice in this country has not established that, although logically sound, these mandatory punishments serve as a deterrent.

The best illustration of that is the so-called Baums law, a fourth offender law in New York State. We reached a point many years ago in New York State where we were persuaded as other States, that on the fourth conviction of a felony a man should go to prison for life. When they wrote that originally they mean just that-life.

Well, juries would not convict, prosecutors would not prosecute. It reached a point where the mandatory life had to be changed to a less severe type of life, which wound up no less than 15, no more than life, which means probably 8, 9, to 15 years, and no mater how stringent the penalties and punishments on the books, law enforcement has found. to some extent that the deterrent effect is not as dramatic as we would hope it to be.

We like the stiffer penalties, but they just don't always work. That is the problem.