Battle Against the Gun

Henry Doss of Chicago kept a .38-cal. revolver for protection at the West Side gas station where he worked as an attendant. Early one Sunday morning, while attempting to thwart a robbery, he pulled the trigger and accidentally killed his 14-year-old son, who was wrestling with the intruder. The intruder was a 16-year-old girl who was packing her own .32-cal. pistol.

The shooting was another in the killing blitz that has hit Chicago in the past few weeks. The same weekend seven people were killed by gunshot, and another 41 were wounded in nonfatal shootings. The previous weekend's death toll was 26, marking it as one of the bloodiest periods in the city's history since the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929.

The deaths followed no particular pattern. Some appeared to be gang-related, some were committed in the course of robberies, some involved narcotics. All but a handful of the victims were blacks. One 17-year-old youth died after an argument over a piece of chicken, another over $10 in a dice game. A third teenager, who hoped some day to become a lawyer, was cut down a block from his home, the apparent victim of a young acquaintance with whom he had quarreled the day before. An 18-year-old was fatally shot by his sister after he threatened her with an ax. An elderly man, enraged because the windows of his house had been broken, rushed out the door with his shotgun and opened fire on three teenagers, killing one and wounding the others.

What bound the incidents together was the gun. No fewer than 26 of the 33 victims on the two weekends were killed by firearms, and of these, all but one by handguns. In the midst of a community outcry for tighter controls on weapons, the Chicago Tribune called on Congress to prohibit the manufacture of all handguns and handgun parts in the U.S. "Guns," says Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, "are the No. 1 problem in the city."

The crux of the problem is that, despite federal and city laws, the number of guns in Chicago has increased steadily over the years. "The guns just keep on coming in," says Homicide Commander William McCarthy. "We're simply outgunned." Police estimate that the citizens of Chicago (pop. 3.2 million) now own 1,500,000 guns, of which scarcely a third are legally registered. And these weapons are playing an ever larger role in the city's crime. In 1965 Chicago recorded 396 homicides, of which 156, or 39%, were committed with handguns; last year there were 864 homicides, and 548 or 63% of them involved handguns.

As in many U.S. cities, local legislation is simply inadequate. Chicago law requires a resident to secure a city permit to buy a gun, and these permits are hard to come by. But in virtually every Chicago suburb, a gun buyer need present only an easily acquired $5 state form called a Firearm Owners Identification Card, as well as proof of identity. "What's the use in having a city law," asks Chicago's Deputy Police Superintendent John Killackey, "when you can walk 20 feet across the city limits and buy an arsenal?"

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