For your research library

[Ol'Coach]

Journal of Legal Studies

4 (1975): 133.

Posted for Educational use only. The printed edition remains canonical. For citational use please visit the local law library or obtain a back issue.

 

 

FIREARMS AND FEDERAL LAW: THE GUN CONTROL ACT OF 1968

 

 

FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING*

 

 

Link to Zimring Study

 

Dated 1975, among other things the research provides an excellent history of gun control acts.

 

Interesting:

 

There is evidence that [Page 135] the approach adopted by the Act can aid state efforts at strict firearms control, although the resources necessary to achieve this end have never been provided by Congress. There is also reason to believe that the potential impact of the Act is quite limited when measured against the problems it sought to alleviate.

 

Final two paragraphs:

Thus, studying the impact of the Gun Control Act gives only limited insight into the consequences of more restrictive federal gun control policies. I am also convinced that the legislative history of both the 1969 and 1938 Acts tell us little about the shape of future federal gun control efforts. It is possible (vide the Federal Firearms Act of 1938) that the Gun Control Act of 1968 will be controlling federal law into the next century. But political sentiments about firearms control may prove more fluid than some commentators believe. It is only if the firearms issue remains as unimportant as it has been to date that one can predict future legislative behavior from prior congressional action.

 

Whatever the future holds, the federal Congress is unprepared to make intelligent policy choices concerning the federal role in firearms regulation. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, with all its faults, has an informational monopoly on firearms regulation. No committee of the Congress has paid sustained attention to the administration of the Act, or prodded the Bureau toward producing the kind of information that is needed for intelligent planning. With sporadic exceptions, those members of Congress [Page 198] that introduce new firearms proposals are failing to obtain or use available information. In the near future any real reform in the administration of the Act will have to be internally generated by the Bureau. If Congress is supposed to be the policy-setting institution, the Gun Control Act of 1968 may stand as an example of the blind leading the halt.

(emphsis mine)

 

Name reference:

* Professor of Law, and Co-Director of the Center for Studies in Criminal justice, University of Chicago. The research reported in this article was supported by a grant from the Law and Social Science Program of the National Science Foundation, GS 38285. Data for the study were provided by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Uniform Crime Reporting Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.), and the Washington, D.C. Police Department. Without such cooperation the study could not have gone forward. Virginia Cook Aronson, Nathan Dardick, Marlene Dubas, Stanley Grimm, Theodore Hirt, and Barry Howard¾all present or former University of Chicago law students¾served as research assistants on this project. Mark Leff, then a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Chicago, prepared a history of federal firearms legislation that bears a striking resemblance to the materials in the first section of Part I. The views expressed in this article are, of course, my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the individuals and agencies that have cooperated in this research.

[Bill Matio]

As I've posted on another thread, I've been reading a book that I picked up the other day.

 

"Gun Control", Gateway to Tyranny by Aaron Zelman and the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, which compares the Gun Control Act of 1968 with the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938.

 

If you haven't heard about this, or read about it, I would suggest that you do. It's shocking to say to least.

[Ol'Coach]

As I've posted on another thread, I've been reading a book that I picked up the other day.

 

"Gun Control", Gateway to Tyranny by Aaron Zelman and the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, which compares the Gun Control Act of 1968 with the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938.

 

If you haven't heard about this, or read about it, I would suggest that you do. It's shocking to say to least.

 

Yes, your post is why I posted this, but thought a new thread would be best. The two seem to go well together.

[Bill Matio]

As I've posted on another thread, I've been reading a book that I picked up the other day.

 

"Gun Control", Gateway to Tyranny by Aaron Zelman and the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, which compares the Gun Control Act of 1968 with the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938.

 

If you haven't heard about this, or read about it, I would suggest that you do. It's shocking to say to least.

 

Yes, your post is why I posted this, but thought a new thread would be best. The two seem to go well together.

Yes they do, Mr. Coach.

 

(Altho reading this book is making my blood pressure go way up, and that's not good!)

 

And btw, for those here who don't know, one of the authors of the GCA of 1968 was then Senator Thomas J. Dodd, father of now Senator Chris Dodd. Boy would I love to see term limits in Congress!