Letters: Gas v. Guns

Sirs:

"Gas & Tears" in TIME, June 28 opens a subject with only one phase presented. Your readers are entitled to all the facts, and we believe the following information will be helpful to them.

We believe any one familiar with the practical use of tear gas does not recommend its use as a palliative for diseases, but that it should only be used under emergency conditions, making unnecessary the use of clubs, revolvers, shotguns, or rifles.

Statistics show that where tear gas is used, as compared to firearms, tear gas does not produce casualties; and other forms of weapons used on such occasions leave wounded and dead behind.

Comparing the specific data referred to in your editorial as against 15 years of practical manufacturing experience, and the actual use of tear gas by police and banks, justifies the following deduction:

We have medical reports, following examinations of employes working in tear gas over long periods of time. These reports show no ill effects resulting from continuous presence with the gas in regular factory operation. We have discharged complete tear gas systems in scores of tests in banks to prove efficiency and harmlessness. In many such bank tests, over 100 people have been gassed with no ill effects. On 26 occasions, banks have released their Federal tear gas system and successfully stopped attempted holdups, driving the bandits from the bank. Customers and employes in the banks showed no after effects. . . .

The question is: Shall gas be eliminated as a practical and humane plan for maintaining law and order, and firearms be used where force is necessary; or shall gas be considered the humane plan, based upon the facts presented herein, and tears be the aftermath in place of wounded and killed?

B. H. BARKER Vice President

Federal Laboratories, Inc. Pittsburgh, Pa.

Not concerned with debating the relative merits of tear gas and guns, TIME reported accurately the American Medical Association's conclusion that "enough irritation . . . may be produced by tear gases to pave the way for secondary bacterial infection."—ED.

Egg Shell Landing

Sirs:

I believe your readers would be interested in the letter which we recently received from Professor Piccard describing his balloon ascension reported in your latest issue [TIME, July 26]. I am attaching a copy of the letter, which seems to me one of the most interesting and dramatic accounts of its kind which I have ever seen.

We have done quite a bit of work with Professor Piccard in supplying balloons for his activities in the upper air and are greatly impressed by his courage and ingenuity. Of course the balloons with which he made his ascent are exactly the same thing as are used singly for sending up meteorological instruments to flash back radio signals of the weather conditions in the stratosphere. Three Government stations are now using them instead of airplanes for obtaining daily weather observations from the upper air. . . .

ROBERT J. GRAY

Dewey and Almy Chemical Co. Cambridge, Mass.

TIME'S thanks to Dewey and Almy Chemical Co. for Professor Piccard's account of his Rochester, Minn, balloon ascension, which follows:—ED.

Dear Mr. Rehbock: