Senator Robert Kennedy Speaks Out on Gun Control (transcript)
Senator ROBERT F. KENNEDY: All it requires is that when somebody purchases a gun through a mail order, when you send a gun or a rifle across state line that you abide by the law of the particular state. All it does is, at the present moment a person who is insane, a man with a long criminal record for having killed a dozen people can go in and buy a rifle. Now if you think that makes sense for all of us, a person who is four years old can buy a rifle now. A person who is six years old… a man on death-row in Kansas who had killed a half a dozen people and someone there sent for a rifle through the mail from Chicago for him to have a rifle while he was waiting on death-row, after killing people, and the rifle was sent to him. Now does that make any sense that we should put rifles and guns in the hands of people who have long criminal records or people who are insane, or people who are mentally incompetent, or people who are so young that they don’t know how to handle rifles and guns.
I just ask you, its not going to take… I mean I just present the case, its presented to you, and I know its presented on the radio here. I’m not making any reflections on this gentleman, but its presented by the John Birch Society as somebody who is going to come in, the federal government is going to come in and take your guns away, or take your rifles away. Nothing is going to happen about that. Anybody can have it just as you can have an automobile. I hear in this community it’s described as… this is the way Nazi Germany started. Well you can say registering an automobile is the way Nazi Germany started. All we’re talking about is having guns not in the hands… anybody can have a gun, anybody can have a rifle, but a person who’s got a criminal record, or who’s in an insane institution, or who’s mentally incompetent shouldn’t have a rifle or guns. Is there anybody out here that thinks those people should have rifles...