Adventure Magazine Cover — page 180: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

174 to Central. I think it was on my third trip to Central that I got a license. I found it entitled me to have a “‘con- cealed weapon” in my house, but not to carry it off my own premises. That re- quired another kind of license. Also, I found it took another kind of license to hunt, or .have hunting-weapons, or some- thing like that. Well, I had a license to cover what I really wanted to do. Then I got a notice to the effect that, while I could have that .22 in my own home, I couldn’t fire it off anywhere in the city of New York without a license from the Fire Department! ND all this time it was not safe to be out at night in our entirely respectable residential district—hold-ups and robber- ies right along. When I went out for a walk in the park at night I took my dog along and took pains to see that no one got close to me “accidentally.” I carried no gun, for after my experience, as a law-abiding citizen, with the police, I figured I’d rather be held up than stand off a hold-up or two and then spend thousands of years in jail for carrying concealed weapons for the pur- pose of getting the protection the police couldn’t give me. I don’t know whether the hold-ups had licenses or not, but they had guns. ' Well, anyhow, the Sullivan Law saved New York City from the menace of hav- ing me shoot .22 bullets up against the stone walls of my own cellar. Though they had to call in the Fire Department to do it. , I’ve moved into the country, but if they pass a national Sullivan Law I don’t know what I can do. As it is, I have to let the deer eat the tips off my young fruit-trees and twist off the branches with their horns. I’m allowed to have rifle, shotgun and such, but I can’t shoot deer with them. Com- plained to the State Game Commissioner, who solemnly sent one of his men to wait around parts of two or three days for the deer to attack him in the daytime and get killed. But they didn’t; they waited till dusk and fixed some more fruit-trees. Maybe the Fire-Department wouldn’t let him shoot his rifle. Ee the present laws work out nicely for the deer and the criminals. If youre neither one of these you get the short Adventure end of things. And I don’t suppose the deer are helping the agitation for this na- tional Sullivan Law. Here are Mr. Harriman’s sentiments: Los Angeles, California. Certain reformers—our chief of police is one— propose to sécure the passage of a national Sullivan Law. They argue that it will stop the killings, hold- ups, burglaries, e? celera, if the decent citizen is dis- armed. Every sane man knows the thug with mur- derous tendencies will have his gun anyhow, law or no law. It simply means putting it beyond the power of the decent man to defend his home or himself. ON E of the things specifically guaranteed to the citizenry is the right to bear arms. See our Constitution. These addle-pated reformers wish to take this right from us and to leave us helpless before the gangster, the thug and robber. One of my corres- pondents writes me that when such a law is passed he is going to xo to Brazil. I won’t. I willstay and fight the law in the courts. If need be, I will fight the men who try to raid my house for arms. It is an un-American law, a fool law. Has it benefited the good citizens of New York to have such a law? I am willing to bet ten dollars against a buffalo nickel that it has not. I call on every man who reads Camp-Fire to let his ideas on this proposition be known in Washington. A law providing that every man owning a gun of any “kind should be compelled to show himself a law-abiding citizen might do good. If every gang- ster caught packing a “rod’’ had to prove to the court his entire respectability, it might lessen the gun-packing by toughs. I am in favor of any law that helps the good citi- zen against the bad. I am in favor of any law that will lessen the number of homicides. But I am not in favor of breaking down the last barrier that keeps the thug at bay, which is the sole object of this pro- posed law. My correspondent writes that a friend in New York was stopped on the street recently and robbed of three hundred dollars. The man who was robbed tried to get a permit to carry a gun and was refused. Do we want this condition all over the United States? Isay wedon’t. I say we are fools if we allow it. ‘THERE is only one remedy—to bring such pres- sure to bear upon our Congressmen and Sena- tors that they will fear to put it over. The point that allowing our citizens to own and carry guns when needed will increase the number of homicides is well taken. It will conduce to a sad depletion in the numbers of our hold-up men. Here in Los Angeles within a fortnight two or three of these men have gone down for the long count, before determined citizens. At Redondo Beach, only a few miles away, two scoundrels tried to rob a meat-market. The proprietor had a six-gun and knew which end to put in front. One hold-up artist died and the other, together with the one who waited outside in the flivver, beat the record for a Henry in the way they left town. Our sissy bill- makers would reverse this. comichbook (E(O)