“In his remarks, Senator Kennedy had much the better argument [than the NRA], which is not surprising since his case is irrefutable. He pointed out that in this decade the number of civilians killed by firearms at home is many times the number of soldiers killed in Vietnam. In 1965 alone, 5,600 murders, 36,000 assaults and most of the 68,000 armed robberies were committed with guns.

”It is easy to argue that these crimes could have been carried out by other means. But advocates of gun-control legislation are making an effort to reduce the toll of death and suffering; they are not offering a panacea. Because a gun is easily concealed, readily available, and achieves its purpose immediately, it is the favorite weapons of the jealous lover, the excitable adolescent and the demented crank. No other weapon can make that claim.“

-- New York Times editorial on a meeting between Senator Ted Kennedy and the NRA on April 5, 1967 vis a vis upcoming gun control legislation. The Times editorial advocated banning ”the sale of firearms through the mail“ and ”the registration of guns with the police.“ A year later, after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed by Congress and signed into law by Lyndon Johnson. It mostly prohibited the interstate transfer of firearms except by licensed dealers, since this was the method Lee Harvey Oswald purchased the rifle that killed Pres. Kennedy in Nov. 1963. The Times editorial, quoted above and below, is the second mention of ”gun control" in the New York Times archives. The first occurred in 1965.

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