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In California, two attractive young San Franciscans named William and Louise Thoresen await trial next week on charges of possessing 70 tons of weapons and ammunition, including a 37-mm. cannon. On the national day of mourning for Robert F. Kennedy, promoters of a Davenport, Iowa, pistol-shooting match decided to go ahead with the event but to observe a moment of silence after each volley, out of respect to the assassinated Senator.
Spurred largely by fears of racial violence, Americans are engaged in a manic internal arms race. "There are more guns in Los Angeles," said a Negro leader, "than in Saigon"—at least 3,000,000. In Massachusetts, 1,100 gun dealers last year sold enough arms to equip an army of 56,000. Chicago's Blackstone Rangers, a 1,000-member black gang, are said to have 1,200 handguns among them.
White would-be vigilantes more than match them. The gun-run is naturally heaviest in areas of recent riots. In Michigan, Dearborn's racist Mayor Orville L. Hubbard exhorted townsfolk to "take up arms, learn to shoot and be a dead shot." Close to 500 Dearborn women are taking regular pistol practice; similar distaff firearm courses are under way from Redondo Beach, Calif., to DeKalb County, Georgia, to Dallas, where 1,000 women have completed a pistol program in recent months.
Increasing numbers of guns are falling into the hands of juveniles; in Chicago last year, 1,293 youths, one only eight years old, were arrested with guns in their possession. Last week in Oklahoma, two brothers, 12 and 10, were charged with shooting a 49-year-old grocer to death. Startling accidents happen, especially around inexperienced gun handlers. A Detroit man heard footsteps in his home, saw the knob of his bedroom door open slowly, leveled his bedside pistol—and fatally drilled his three-year-old daughter through the head. In Gunnison, Colo., Robert Delaney was riding along a dirt road on a motorbike when a shot rang out. His 15-year-old son Kirk, following on another motorbike, tumbled to the ground dead. Then his ten-year-old son was killed. Down the road, Delaney found a middle-aged hunter with a .30-'06 rifle, who explained that he had mistaken the boys, who were wearing red hats and riding a red bike, for an elk.
Like Bullet Holes. This "contagion of blood," as Italian Author Indro Montanelli called it, has understandably dismayed other nations, which despite their own long histories of violence have come to expect something better of the U.S. "Recourse to violence as a form of solving differences is one of the philosophic norms which the Yankees have spread with greatest efficacy throughout the world," lectured Barcelona's El Noticiero Universal, overlooking Spain's own sanguinary history. Foreign critics also tend to forget that there are many different forms of violence. A police state, which operates on the threat of violence by the government against its own citizens, can more easily maintain order and prevent crime that a free society. Soviet Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko chose to ignore that fact when he recently wrote:
The stars
In your flag,
America,
Are like bullet holes.