GLASSEN, PARR, RHEAD & MCLEAN, Mr. WARREN PAGE, Field & Stream, 383 Madison Avenue, New York, NY. DEAR MR. PAGE: Pursuant to our telephone conversations, I provide you with the following statistical data which I have secured from the Michigan Department of Conservation: 43 percent of all small-game license buyers hunt only 1 or 2 days; for example 16 percent of all pheasant hunters hunt 1 day only, and 19 percent only 2 days; 46 percent of the ruffed grouse hunters hunt not to exceed 3 days and 50 percent of the rabbit hunters hunt 4 days or less; 15 percent of the Michigan deer hunters have not purchased a license in the preceding 5 years and another 11 percent have hunted only once during the preceding 5 years; 15 percent of the Michigan deer hunters hunted not to exceed 2 days. My investigation convinces me that at least in Michigan and probably in the other hunting States of the Midwest at least one-third of all hunting license buyers are casual and intermittent hunters. Professional conservationists believe that placing redtape requirements for gun acquisition on would-be license buyers will discourage a very substantial part of this one-third casual hunters mentioned. In Michigan we sell well over 800,000 hunting licenses, so the potential loss of revenue so vitally needed in our conservation programs is most alarming. I trust that the foregoing is the information you wanted and I am very happy that you are going to use the same tact or approach that I previously tried before the old Dodd subcommittee. With you and Mert Golden, and I hope some others, taking this line we may make a point. Kindest personal regards. H. W. GLASSEN. PENNSYLVANIA GAME COMMISSION, Mr. WARREN PAGE, Field & Stream, 383 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. DEAR WARREN: We of the Pennsylvania Game Commission are very much concerned about the provisions of S. 1592 which, in its present form will, if passed by the Congress, have such a disastrous effect on the sale of hunting licenses and resultant loss of revenue to outdoor recreation in the State of Pennsylvania. The loss of revenue will be reflected through the loss of hunting license sales and the loss of Pittman-Robertson allocation. If S. 1592 in its present form becomes a reality, we most certainly will lose possibly as much as 20 percent of our total license sales. This, in our opinion, would be a very serious blow to outdoor recreation and the program of human physical fitness. Very truly yours, Mert Golden, M. J. GOLDEN, Executive Director. [Reprinted from Field & Stream, April 1964] FOR A STRONG AMERICA “* * * the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”— Article II, the Bill of Rights We believe that the future safety of the United States depends on a responsible citizenry skilled in the safe and effective use of personal firearms and alert to the threat of extremist groups that would change our form of government, and that this responsibility should cut through all strata of our society and transcend any personal prejudice for or against firearms. We believe that the second amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing the right of the people to keep and bear arms, is no more outdated than any other guarantee set forth in the Bill of Rights or in the Constitution itself. Although the second amendment was written nearly 200 years ago, the right of each citizen to own guns is still the strongest deterrent to criminal entry of our homes or to the subversive overthrow of our Government. We believe that laws requiring the registration of personal or sporting arms, whether at municipal, State or Federal level, are demonstrably ineffectual in deterring the criminal, and constitute a calculated first step toward eventually depriving honest citizens of gun ownership. We believe that the licensing of personal firearms imposes a costly and unfair burden on the responsible citizen but no burden whatsoever on the criminal; that such licensing carries within it the seeds of police-state government and the eventual corruption of both police and judiciary. We believe that young people should be restrained from the free purchase of firearms without parental consent, and that their use of firearms in public areas should be subject to adult supervision; but we further believe that the facilities for the training of both juveniles and adults in safe and sane skill with personal or sporting arms should be expanded throughout the Nation by every possible agency. We believe that penalties for the criminal misuse of firearms should be mandatory and severe, and that laws in this respect should be so written as to penalize the criminal and his act, not the gun employed. We likewise believe that the theft of any firearm, regardless of value, should be construed as a major crime, since it implies intent to use the firearm criminally. We believe that laws, either State or Federal, should insure public safety by controlling access to firearms or other dangerous weapons by convicted felons, fugitives from justice, mental incompetents, habitual drunkards, and drug addicts. We believe that no law which lacks either enforceability or public respect, or which is devised merely as a further extension of police authority, or which would turn law-abiding citizens into either deliberate or unknowing violators, can be legally or morally justified. We believe that the views expressed here are substantially those of all the readers of Field & Stream and of the great mass of some 50 million hunters, shooters, and sportsmen of these United States, and we call upon them to impress such views on lawmakers who would mistakenly abridge their right to bear arms. Mr. PAGE. Thank you, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Any questions of Mr. Page? If not, sir, we are pleased that you came to the committee. We appreciate your appearance. Without objection, the committee adjourns until 10 a.m. Monday morning. (Whereupon, at 12:43 p.m., the hearing recessed to reconvene at 10 a.m. Monday, July 26, 1965.) PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO FIREARMS ACTS MONDAY, JULY 26, 1965 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D.C. The commmittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to notice, in the committee room, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Wilbur D. Mills (chairman of the committee), presiding. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please be in order. Our first witness this morning is Mr. Leslie Field. Mr. Field, if you will identify yourself for our record by giving us your name, address, and capacity in which you appear we will be glad to recognize you. STATEMENT OF LESLIE E. FIELD, MARS EQUIPMENT CORP., AND SHORE GALLERIES Mr. FIELD. Good morning, gentlemen. My name is Leslie E. Field. I represent the Mars Equipment Corp. and Shore Galleries which are firms doing business in all aspects of the firearms trade in the area of Chicago, Ill. The parties herein represented are dealers at retail (Shore Galleries) and importers, wholesalers, and mail-order dealers in firearms and ammunition (Mars Equipment Corp.) In addition, the latter is licensed as a dealer under the National Firearms Act in the weapons covered by that legislation. The principals of these concerns have tried to become as familiar as possible with existing legislation, because they have the responsibility of conforming a widely diversified commerce to law. In forming the opinions expressed herein, they have attempted to balance their appreciation of the realities of law enforcement and crime prevention with the ideal of preserving, to the extent practical, the existing right of the private citizen to own, acquire, use, transfer, and transport firearms, which has existed since the founding of this country. This statement is intended to set the administration proposals in perspective as to how they may be expected to operate in the hands of the existing mechanism for their enforcement, which will be, if we understand these proposals properly, by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division of the Internal Revenue Service. Alcohol and tobacco taxes have been levied as sources of national revenue since a very early date in our history and have been a fertile source of enforcement problems since Shay's Rebellion. The problem of enforcement, however, has been not so much one of determining discretionary policy, as much as one of collecting every dollar due from recalcitrant-and sometimes rather hostile-taxpayers. The administration now proposes that this division of government shall be given broad discretionary powers to control who may be in the commerce in firearms, and what movement of firearms shall be permitted between the States and into the country. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division is now primarily responsible for collection of alcohol and tobacco taxes, which function it performs with exemplary efficiency, and with very little of the self-congratulatory publicity which attend many of the other enforcing and investigating agencies of our Government. In addition, this organization must formulate rules of operation for the large and complex lawful industries in alcohol and tobacco, but largely in the sphere of tax collection, and not in consideration of whether these businesses, or the continued operation of any part of them, are in the public interest. The legislation embodied in the Federal Firearms Act proposal apparently envisions that the Alcohol Tax Unit is going to be able to monitor practically every case of firearms transportation where a firearm goes from one State to the other each year. What does that involve? That probably involves, as near as we can calculate, 1 million separate incidents of transportation of firearms across State lines, 1 million of them. What are the effects of some of the prohibitions that this act has? Well, if you are a citizen in one State, a private citizen, and not a firearms dealer, it seems to us that this law postively enjoins you from sending any firearm across a State line to another citizen. That act seems to be forbidden by this. If you are a dealer you cannot of course transfer to any private citizen in another State. The Attorney General appeared here and he stated that he thought that the inconveniences to the interstate trade could be met by the establishment of branches of the interstate traders in every State. Gentlemen, I think you know that that isn't a terribly realistic solution, and is a point of economics. Nobody maintains branches of the firearms business in every State in the Union. It isn't done and it isn't very practical to do and it certainly isn't very practical for any kind of small firm. Looking back at the question of how much the Alcohol Tax Unit can control and how much it can do, we have mentioned the fact that they would have to monitor every case of interstate transportation of a firearm to do a fair job of enforcing the provisions. For instance, when the individual takes his hunting license across State lines, is he taking it for the purposes of sale or not? They would have to be looking into that. Does the taking of a pistol across the State line have to conform to the laws of each State through which he passes? There will be an enormous number of checking operations if this thing is going to be enforced uniformly, fairly, and against every citizen in the same position. When they choose to modify the National Firearms Act of putting "destructive devices" this proposal envisions a broad coverage of practically every type of firearm that has ever been invented, and the objective after that is that the Secretary of the Treasury is then sup |