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At least two dozen Congressmen are members, including Iowa's Republican Senator Bourke Hickenlooper. N.R.A. has 182 "field representatives" working on legislation, not only in Washington but in 47 state capitals as well. Much of its $5,700,000 budget goes toward promoting such slogans as "Shooting Is Safe." Despite its insistence that it does not directly tell its members to write their Congressmen, astounding numbers of them certainly do—usually sending identically worded messages supplied by the organization's magazine, American Rifleman. Tydings, for example, received thousands of letters with his name misspelled Tidings aftter it appeared that way in the magazine.
Any time a gun bill is introduced anywhere, a number of basic shibboleths are constantly repeated by N.R.A. officials. Among them:
"The constitutional right to bear arms will be infringed."
N.R.A. is fond of quoting the second half of the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights, but not the first. The full amendment reads: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." Consistently, federal courts have interpreted the Second Amendment as referring to a collective right, not an individual privilege. The Supreme Court ruled as far back as 1939 that the amendment expressly concerns "the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia." Nevertheless, the major gun magazines endlessly celebrate the majesty and inviolability of the "armed citizen." In a recent issue of the noisy Guns & Ammo magazine, one article is titled: "The American and His Gun—A Tradition the World Envies."
"Guns don't kill people; people kill people."
The N.R.A. points out that autos kill three times as many Americans as guns each year, and asks archly: "Why not ban them?" (One reply: Autos are registered. Why not guns?) N.R.A. officials also cite a study made by University of Pennsylvania Sociologist Marvin E. Wolfgang of 588 criminal homicides committed in Philadelphia over a four-year period. He concluded that, given "sufficient motivation or provocation," it makes no difference whether a gun is handy—if not, the offender "would use a knife to stab or fists to beat his victim to death." But Wolfgang has since modified that view. As Detroit Police Commissioner Ray Girardin puts it: "When people have guns, they use them. A wife gets mad at her husband, and instead of throwing a dish she grabs the gun and kills him." Agrees Psychiatrist Robert Coles: "Every psychiatrist has treated patients who were thankful that guns were not around at one time or another in their lives."
If guns were to be registered, the anticontrol fraternity maintains, so should knives, golf clubs, axes, beer bottles and every other implement occasionally used to kill. (Guns & Ammo facetiously suggests registering the genitals of all American males, since there are so many rapes in the U.S.) Still, nothing else can translate a fleeting murderous impulse into action more efficiently or finally than a gun. There is no need for contact, none of the effort required to stab or bludgeon a human being.
"When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."