In 1969, a presidential commission called for the confiscation of almost all handguns — and the prosecution of those who would not comply. Established by President Johnson in 1968, the commission, led by Freemason and President emeritus of John Hopkins University, Milton Eisenhower – the younger brother of Dwight D. Eisenhower, made startling recommendations in its report. Eisenhower called for the federal government and the states to confiscate 90% of the 2.4 million handguns then owned by private citizens and to prosecute anyone who refused an order to turn them in. The commission counted 8000 firearms homicides annually and sought federal standards that would restrict gun ownership to only those who could demonstrate “reasonable need” for them.
Handgun sales went soaring and an outcry led the Nixon administration, still in its first year of the presidency, to have no interest in confiscating the citizen’s guns. Congress soon began watering down various provisions of the 1968 Gun Control Act, exempting shotgun and high-powered rifle ammunition from regulation in late 1969 because hunters were balking at regulations of guns used mainly for recreation an hunting.
Milton Eisenhower’s National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence study recommended that private handgun ownership be banned. But the bias behind that and other recommendations was stripped away in a later study by the Carter administration that was intended to confirm the Hopkins findings and provide a launch pad for draconian gun laws. It didn’t. Carter researchers found the Hopkins study was “results oriented” and intentionally constructed to come to the conclusions it did. The surprise Carter conclusion, which was shoved under the proverbial publicity rug, stated: “It is commonly hypothesized that much criminal violence, especially homicide, occurs simply because firearms are readily at hand and, thus, that much homicide would not occur were firearms generally less available. There is no persuasive evidence that supports this view.” The lead researcher then delivered what remains the coup de grâce most have never heard: “A compelling case for gun control cannot be made.”
That should have pushed the red flag law idea over the precipice, but it didn’t. Gun-control activists keep making up “truths” that reflect their own irrational biases, without any regard to the likelihood that their new laws would bring about a legal and constitutional slippery slope and a descent into a police state of informers and arbitrary arrests.
In the early 70’s, the ATF came to be seen as a meddlesome enforcer of gun laws and made it difficult for everyday citizens to buy and keep guns. The NRA leadership that had supported the 1968 gun law was overthrown and replaced by leaders who, in the mid-70’s, began calling for its repeal. Eight years after the 1968 Gun Control Act, it was obvious that it had no effect on violent crimes or deaths and injuries from firearms. These numbers were only skyrocketing. The District of Columbia, the land of the lawmakers, saw a record high in 1974, but like idiots, only went even further with a complete handgun ban and all rifles had to be disassembled.
