[From June 1965 issue of Trap and Field]

Mr. KING. You don't mean to imply that we are to be deprived of hearing Mrs. Foxworthy for a moment or two?

Mr. MCCRACKEN. No, sir.

Mr. KING. We don't very often have female citizens here interested in guns, and particularly in an official capacity, so I think it would be no more than fair, Mr. Battin, if Mrs. Foxworthy would have something to say.

Mr. BATTIN. I think it would be very helpful, Mr. Chairman.
Mrs. FOXWORTHY. Do you have a specific question?

Mr. KING. No, but we would be happy to have your views on this subject matter if you have any.

Mrs. FOXWORTHY. When a woman is involved, you know you are letting yourself open to a lot.

Specifically, this bill would work a hardship on many shotgun shooters who send their guns to dealers for repair, who send them to gunstock makers to be stocked, or to be choked, to have a release trigger put on, this type of thing.

Now, not in the shipping to the dealer, but in the return to the person, this is under such regulation as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe, which is not spelled out, and of course we do not know what this means.

There would also be hardship in shipping guns between shooters. We have a full page every month, "The Gun Exchange," where shooters sell shotguns, tournament shotguns, to one another, and this of course would mean that they could not send them to each other in even neighboring States.

Aside from the specifics, what I would like to say generally, and I have said it editorially in my magazine, as I do not think that a person's decision to be a criminal depends upon the availability of means or victims.

This is a basic choice a person makes, whether to commit a criminal act or not, and if a gun is not available to use, he will use some other means. If there is not a hardware store to rob, it will be a bank or something else.

You are not going to legislate the criminal out of the American scene or anyplace else by taking away guns. They will find some other way. It is a basic decision usually that a person makes, and I think this should be recognized, that a man can make choices about his own life, and that most criminals do make choices about what they do, and that they must accept the responsibility for their decisions and for their actions, and the punishment should not only be severe, but certain and prompt.

Some statistics I believe that you heard yesterday show that in a major city there were 18,000 crimes of violence, and I cannot tell you right now over what period of time, but of 18,000, about 200 of them resulted in anybody serving a sentence or being convicted. That is what? A little over 1 percent conviction.

Sylvia Porter the other day said that Dun & Bradstreet says the business failures now of new businesses starting is 54 percent, so you see percentagewise it is much better to go into a life of crime than it is to start up a new business.

So I think this is one thing that everybody has to be concerned about, and that is that the offender does get justice, swift, and sure.

Thank you.

Mr. KING. Thank you, Mrs. Foxworthy.

(The following revisions of certain statistics presented by Miss Foxworthy have been received.)

As I recall my words, I said that in a certain city within 1 year there were over 18,000 crimes of violence. I think I went on to say that there were 200 convictions on these counts, making the statistical percentage of punishment a little greater than 1 percent.

The actual statistics are these. In 18,031 cases there were only 217 jury trials. Another 1,869 defendents pleaded guilty. So actually there were over 2,000 brought to court. I do not know how many were convicted, so I request that my statement be changed to read 2,000 brought to trial rather than 200 convictions and, further, that the percentage of likelihood of punishment be increased to 10 percent rather than 1 percent.

I am very sorry to cause you this trouble, but I would like to correct the record. I want to assure you that I had no intention of making a misstatement. I was remembering that just 217 of these defendants had felt the full weight of the law, since the 1,869 who pleaded guilty undoubtedly received a lighter sentence than if they had been found guilty by a jury.

Although I regret the error very much, I do not think that it decreases the validity of my eventual point, which was that statisticially there is less risk today in beginning a life of crime than in starting a legitimate business.

Again, let me thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee. Mr. MCCRACKEN. Mr. Chairman, may we have the reporter take the page 97 from the June 1965 issue of Trap & Field, as edited by Mrs. Foxworthy, and include that page with the exhibits attached to the original of my statement? (See p. 562.)

Mr. KING. Without objection, that is ordered.

Mr. MCCRACKEN. Thank you, sir.

Mr. BATTIN. I would like to say for the record that the delegation of authority that you are concerned about appears six times in the bill that is presently before the committee.

You made the point, I believe, Mr. McCracken, that you were concerned about the regulatory power that the Secretary of the Treasury might have, but, in looking at the bill, you will find that in six different places this delegation is given by the Congress to the Secretary in order to promulgate rules and regulations under the bill itself.

Mr. MCCRACKEN. Yes, sir, Congressman Battin. I made some reference, perhaps not as pointedly as the No. 6 location, in my statement. Mr. KING. Thank you again.

Mr. MCCRACKEN. Thank you.
Mr. KING. Mr. Cummings.

STATEMENT OF SAMUEL CUMMINGS, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL

ARMAMENT CORP.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I share the previous witness' wish to conclude my testimony as rapidly as possible, because I fully appreciate your own pressure on time.

I have just been in the Senate hearing before the Dodd committee on this same general subject, and with your permission, Mr. Chairman, I will merely précis my testimony there and then submit it for the record.

Mr. KING. Very well, Mr. Cummings. It will be inserted in the record.

(Statement referred to follows:)

STATEMENT OF SAMUEL CUMMINGS, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL ARMAMENT CORP., BEFORE THE SENATE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE ON JUVENILE DELINQUENCY, JULY 27, 1965

My name is Samuel Cummings. I am the president of International Armament Corp. I am here in response to your kind invitation, Mr. Chairman, to comment on S. 1592.

I want to come right to the point because I know your time is limited. But, first, let us say, as a firm that makes its living buying and selling guns throughout the world, we are grateful for the intensive effort that you and the staff are giving to the serious problem of the relation between crime and the accessibility of firearms. The evidence produced by your several years of hard work points clearly to the need for improving gun control laws, and we want to help if we can.

We also feel strongly that there has been a lot of confusion on the subject of imports which we would like to point out, both in our own self-interest and in the interest of the integrity of a serious and constructive crime control bill. The embargoes on imports proposed in section 3 (e) of the bill would be bad law for three reasons: first, they are unnecessary and ineffective to the purposes of this bill; second, they are discriminatory in violation of American traditions of minimal and fair Federal regulation of commerce and the consumer's right to decide how he spends his own money; and third, the section, deliberately or otherwise, exploits gun industry politics in a way which is likely to impair passage of an otherwise constructive bill, which is apparently being hammered out of S. 1592.

The testimony we have seen before this committee and, above all, before the House Ways and Means Committee, has left complete confusion as to the composition of the allegedly objectionable imports. Both the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue presented the committee with a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't presentation of the object of the proposed embargo, both of them carefully avoiding disclosure of any breakdown between the categories of weapons to which section 3 (e) apply and those to which it would not. They imply that the target is a million firearms imported annually.

Let's look a little closer. There are four distinct categories of imports which make up the 573,474 firearms of all types, calibers, and price ranges which were imported in 1964, according to Bureau of the Census statistics. This is about half of the 1-million figure annually so frequently mentioned by proponents of this bill.

First, there is a growing trade in high-cost foreign shotguns, rifles, and handguns which are manufactured abroad with an eye on the large U.S. market for sporting firearms. Illustrative is the recent competition from Japan in expensive over-and-under shotguns which are made to the order of Winchester, the Olin-Mathieson firearms subsidiary. The proponents of the bill repeatedly proclaim that they do not intended to interfere in the source of supply of such quality items but never exactly define where they would draw the line. Second, there are the low-cost, newly made .22-caliber foreign nonmilitary firearms, heavily sold through the mails. Handguns of this type are cited by some law enforcement officers as a major aggravation of their local crime problem. But caliber .22 handguns and rifles are made in this country at a very low cost. We accept the evidence that mail-order sales of foreign, newly made .22-caliber handguns which are not military surplus have featured prominently in firearm crimes in certain of the large cities. The National Rifle Association condemns the quality of these imports by implication in refusing to advertise them in their magazine, the American Rifleman. We join with many others in wishing that there were a legitimate method of keeping these $10 items out of the hands of juveniles and criminals. It would appear that the proposed mail-order restrictions go a long way to meeting the problem.

Third, there is a very small trade in imported high-caliber military surplus, such as bazookas, antitank guns, and mortars, without live ammunition. The market is largely the suburban residence which occasionally sports a cannon on the lawn for conversation and decoration. The amount of this trade is negligible, but several isolated episodes with these destructive devices has provided proponents of this legislation with a shocker. Our company and others would be most grateful to Congress, or the State Department which presently

regulates surplus imports, for preventing the importation of these crew-served weapons which have no commercial significance and present a public relations problem.

Fourth, there are the military surplus small arms about 80-85 percent centerfire rifles, which have been opposed for 10 years by the domestic manufacturers, as foreign competition. These firearms have opened up a legitimate new market for a good, low-cost sporting and target-shooting weapon, frequently a collection item, and generally at prices ranging from $25 to $40 in recent years.

The main controversy presented by section 3 (e) and its main impact relates to this fourth category; small arms military surplus imports. They have no more to do with the crime problem than the new and secondhand domestic center-fire rifles, which are very rarely used in crime because they are too big to conceal, too loud, and too long range. It has been amply demonstrated by the American consumer that there is a legitimate market composed of about 2 million purchases of imported military rifles over a decade. These law-abiding gun hobbyists and sportsmen, and no one claims they are criminals, have long since resolved the question of whether or not these rifles are "particularly suitable for lawful sporting purposes"-the justification for embargo implied by the proposed bill.

There is no inherent difference between bolt-action center-fire rifles, whether made for sporting purposes or for military purposes, whether made in the United States or made abroad, whether new or used. The price ranges overlap to a surprising degree. Any used rifle naturally sells at a discount, but, in the general range of $35 to $150, you will find secondhand military rifles, secondhand U.S. sporting rifles, and lower priced new sporting rifles. To show the similarity, I offer as exhibits before this committee photographs of a Winchester 70 series new sporting rifle which retails at $139, a deluxe sporter remanufactured from a World War II military Mauser retailing at $79, an imported German Mauser military rifle "as is" which retails at $30, and a U.S. Springfield 1903 surplus rifle which retails commercially at $40, and has been sold in large volume to members through the National Rifle Association at $15 in recent years by the U.S. Government. Section 3(e) of this bill would apparently make both these Mausers illegal for distribution in the United States, but not so the Winchester or the Springfield sold through the National Rifie Association by the U.S. Government. It is submitted that there are no crime statistics and no evidence from this subcommittee's hearing, this year or last, to establish that any of these weapons are a likely choice for a man contemplating a crime. Crime statistics, such as the ones mentioned by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, as published in the Washington Post on January 10, 1965, place center-fire rifles at the bottom of the list of weapon types used in crimes. The very statistics published in the "Uniform Crime Reports for 1963" indicate that only 10 percent of homicides are attributed to rifles of all types. Based on press reports it is obvious that a large part of these are nonmilitary caliber .22 rifles of U.S. manufacture. Therefore, section 3 (e) is patently discriminatory insofar as there is no evidence of any significant difference between military and sporting center-fire rifles, domestic and foreign, from a crime standpoint.

There have been loose charges that imported military rifles are "junk"; this charge is pertinent to the pending legislation because, if true, it could be said that they are unsuitable for sporting purposes. The fact is that our company alone has sold over a million of such rifles in the United States over a decade. perhaps half of all sales. Most of these sales in the last 3 years have been at prices ranging from $25 to $40. This many Americans would not be likely to spend this much money on junk. The fact is that men who know guns recognize that these weapons have been manufactured to specifications far more stringent than most of the sporting firearms on the market today. Recently, H. P. White, America's leading independent firearms testing laboratory which serves the entire industry, performed an exhaustive series of tests covering a total of 16 different types of military and 6 different types of U.S. commercial rifles of current production. All rifles passed these destructive tests in a satisfactory manner without qualifications. The experience of our insurers against product liability has been excellent, and we enjoy insurance rates on foreign military rifles comparable or lower than the rates for new sporting firearms. The National Rifle Association's authoritative magazine, the American Rifleman, takes advertising only of firearms which meet standards of safety and performance ascertained in their