The Congress: More Good Than Bad

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Rarely had so many politicians altered their positions so radically and so swiftly. As mail cascaded into their Capitol Hill offices, Senators and Representatives who had long opposed even the mildest gun-control legislation nimbly switched sides. "Times change," said Nebraska's Republican Senator Roman Hruska, once Capitol Hill's strongest opponent of controls, "and sometimes they change rapidly."

Capitalizing on Congress' receptive mood, Connecticut Democrat Thomas Dodd's Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee voted unanimously to send the President's bill banning mail-order sales of rifles and shotguns to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will tackle the issue this week. The House Judiciary Committee, which deadlocked 16 to 16 on the Johnson bill only two weeks ago, passed it by a 29-to-6 vote.

In the wake of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, public revulsion gave Congress its cue. Maryland's Democratic Senator Joseph Tydings, the sponsor of a tough bill that would require licenses for the purchase and possession of firearms and ammunition, and registration of the weapons, was deluged with 10,000 letters supporting his stand. San Francisco as well as neighboring Marin County passed a registration ordinance. In Chicago, a voluntary turn-in campaign has prompted the surrender of 75 guns a day. Florida's Jordan Marsh and Burdine's chains quit selling toy guns, while Sears, Roebuck, the world's largest retailer, stopped advertising weapons as well as children's "toys of violence." A surprising exception to the mood of reevaluation; Presidential Candidate Eugene McCarthy, who insists that controls are a state rather than a federal matter because of widely varying conditions, and who warned against legislating "under panic conditions."

Grinding Out Letters. To be sure, there was a degree of haste. Partly, it was prompted by news that the National Rifle Association had begun grinding out letters to its nearly 1,000,000 members, telling them to write Congressmen and Senators immediately but not to use "abusive or threatening" language.

For his part, the President would like to see a provision tacked onto his bill calling for registration and licensing of guns. But he fears it would result in time-killing hearings or a lengthy debate in Congress. Without question, he considers the gun-control provision in the omnibus crime bill to be hopelessly weak. He is not at all happy about the rest of the bill, either, though he reluctantly signed it into law last week. Johnson had considered vetoing the bill, but was assured by eleven governmental departments whose advice he had requested that most sections would hold up under constitutional law. Only four hours and 46 minutes before midnight, when the bill would have become law automatically, he finally signed the 110-page document with the resigned comment: "This measure contains more good than bad."