Chicago women are working hard to protect innocent women from lives
of infamy and to help the repentant to a nobler womanhood. If there
were men working among their own sex with equal devotions there would
be a lessening of the social evil. If physicians would teach men the
safety of chastity and the horrors of licentiousness, if preachers
would train their guns against impurity, if popular clubs would expel
licentious men, if the mayor would order the arrest of every person,
man or woman, found in these houses, apparently so well known to the
police, and have such arrests continued night after night, these
methods would cause a marked lessening of the social evil.
The police of Chicago have done much in recent years to make it a
better city. To them is due the credit more than to anyone else for
better conditions in our moral life. If they are encouraged and
allowed to work out these problems in their own practical way they
will do more for our city's good than all the theoretical reformers
combined.
Many conditions ought not to exist, but they must and will remain
for the present. Your reformer, so-called, writes and pleads for the
ideal. The police force deals with what is and knows best what can be
done.
SUPPRESS MANUFACTURE AND SALE OF DANGEROUS
WEAPONS--THEY ARE A CONSTANT MENACE TO LIFE AND GOOD ORDER.
MADE SOLELY FOR UNLAWFUL USE--ENGENDER CRIME, INCREASE ACCIDENTS
AND MAKE SUICIDE EASY--CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS A VICIOUS AND
INEXCUSABLE HABIT.]
[Illustration: LAW TO REGULATE SALE OF FIREARMS]
The "lid" should be put upon deadly weapons--pistols, revolvers, dirk
knives, brass knuckles--not merely to hide them, but to prevent their
manufacture and sale.
While serving as police officer I could not fail to observe that
substantially all of the crimes committed with the pistol or
revolver resulted from the practice of carrying the weapon upon the
person. There would be a controversy in a bar-room, on the street or
elsewhere, followed by a fight and ending with a shooting by someone
present who had the weapon conveniently concealed upon his person. But
for the presence of the weapon on the scene there would have been no
shooting.
I recall but one case where the defendant left the scene of the
controversy to procure a weapon. Murder committed by lying in wait
or with premeditation for any length of time is extremely rare. In
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the crime is committed on the spur
of the moment.
Statistics furnished by the police department show startling facts.
Citizens do not realize the number of persons who are either wounded
or killed every year by shooting with the revolver. One can hardly
pick up a metropolitan paper without finding an account of a shooting,
either by accident or design. We have laws forbidding the carrying of
concealed weapons, which are to a certain extent effective, but to
a very small extent, because it is practically impossible to search
every man on the street--and keep him searched. The law, no matter how
rigidly enforced, can do but little substantial good.
We must also consider other deadly weapons, such as dirk knives and
brass knuckles. So far as these are concerned, they are manufactured
solely to be used as instruments of crime. The brass knuckle is never
used as a weapon of defense, but always as one of offense. The dirk
knife has no use other than as a weapon to be used against human
beings. It is not used either in war or for any domestic purpose.
So far as the revolver is concerned, it has no proper use anywhere in
the world. It is carried either as a weapon of offense or defense;
but as a weapon of defense it is only possibly effective when there
is a revolver in the hands of the antagonist. If he has none, none is
needed for defense.
An attack made upon a man at close quarters by the use of a sandbag
or any other weapon in the hands cannot be met practically with a
revolver. There is no time or opportunity for its use.
The proposition is therefore sound that, if no one carried a pistol
for offense, none would be needed for defense.
Shotguns and rifles are used in hunting, but not the revolver.
The ordinary revolver of commerce, the one which a man can carry
concealed, has no use in modern warfare. There is no legitimate use
anywhere for such a weapon.
September, 1907, officials of the New York police department, acting
under Commissioner Bingham's orders, took 5,000 revolvers out to sea
beyond Sandy Hook and threw them overboard. The literary secretary of
the commissioner said it reminded him of the Doges who used to wed the
sea with rings. If the New York ceremony was not so richly symbolical
it certainly was vastly more sensible.
These revolvers were the results of eighteen months of police
seizures. Some of them were automatic weapons in the $28 class, and
others were of the common variety used by small boy initiates in
crime. Together they were worth at least $15,000. Not so very long
ago New York City held an auction sale every year just before the
Fourth of July at which all confiscated weapons were sold. Thereby
Fourth of July killings were made easy and cheap, and crime at all
other times of the year was encouraged, for most of the weapons went
to pawnbrokers and second-hand dealers, who put them back in the hands
that would use them worst. The police have one instance of a revolver
that to their knowledge came back into their possession four times in
this way.
It is wise to destroy these weapons, but consider how little good is
accomplished compared with what might be accomplished by original
control of the sale of weapons. The city sacrifices the $15,000 or
something less which it might have got for these weapons, but if it
would take $15,000 and spend it vigorously in regulating the sale
of weapons, in licensing and perhaps heavily taxing all dealers, in
requiring the keeping of complete records of sales and in prosecuting
all persons carrying concealed weapons, it would accomplish very much
more to the same end.
Chicago is a city in which unlimited laxity is allowed dealers
in pistols. The way is made easy for the criminal who wants to
arm himself. Despite the successful experience of other cities in
regulating the sales of weapons, the council is reluctant to give the
city a stronger ordinance.
Suicide with the revolver is a favorite method of self-destruction
with men. Press the muzzle against the head or heart, a slight
pressure of the forefinger--instant oblivion follows.
The bandit who holds up the railroad train and robs the passengers
almost invariably uses a revolver. With this small weapon he
terrorizes and robs an entire trainload of travelers.
The vicious carry pistols with criminal intent, but there is also
a very large class, which might be designated as a "weak" class,
which carries the pistol without any criminal intent, but under
the influence of a fascination for the handling of deadly weapons.
Among certain classes of negroes it is the habit to carry pistols or
other deadly weapons to balls, parties or other places where they
congregate, and they carry them, apparently, to a certain extent, as
a matter of ornament, something on the principle of our gentlemanly
forefathers of a few hundred years ago, who considered no full-dress
equipment complete without the rapier. The very fact that these
weapons are present leads to brawls and quarrels, which result only
too frequently in killing, or an attempt to kill.
It is dangerous to put into the hands of a weak person a weapon which
may carry death and destruction by the small pressure of the finger.
The very handling of such weapons seems to breed the desire to use
them. The situation is something similar to that of a man who gazes
over the brink of a precipice and to whom there comes an almost
irresistible desire to throw himself over.
There would be some force in the argument that the law-abiding citizen
has the right to carry a revolver to protect himself from thugs if
his pistol were any real protection; but it is not. The attack from
the thug on the highway comes so suddenly and unexpectedly that there
is rarely an opportunity to use a weapon in defense; and, even if
it should occasionally happen that a man would be at a disadvantage
because he had no pistol, this loss to the community is outweighed a
thousand to one by the evils which follow its use.
Why should we permit men to manufacture and sell instruments of
crime--weapons which are designed for no other purpose? We do have
laws which prevent the free sale of poisons, based upon the fact
that poisons may be used as a means of self-destruction or in the
destruction of others. But we have no safeguards against the purchase
and use of these other deadly agencies.
A brilliant display of deadly weapons may be found in any first-class
hardware store, one which is peculiarly tempting to the young, the
weak and the vicious. Pawnshops are heavily stocked with weapons of
this character.
There are a hundred places on the streets of Chicago, particularly on
Clark and State streets, where may be found in cases standing in front
of stores a display of brass knuckles, dirks and revolvers, which
can be purchased at a very small price--and without restrictions of
any kind. Yet they are purchased, almost exclusively, to be used as
instruments of crime.
Experience has demonstrated that the laws which forbid the carrying of
concealed weapons are not effective; and it is not possible that, in
the very nature of things, they can be entirely so. There is only one
sure and effective way of preventing the criminal use of these deadly
weapons--that is, to make it impossible for men to get hold of them.
This can be done only by forbidding their manufacture and sale. The
State, in the exercise of its police power, has authority to pass laws
of this character.
I submit that it is the duty of the community to demand the passage
of such laws. There seems to be no answer to this proposition when
you consider that these articles are not manufactured to sell for
any legitimate purpose, and that to deprive men of the privilege of
manufacturing and selling deadly weapons does not, in any degree,
deprive the community of anything which may be of any real use or
benefit.
It is the duty of the State to prevent as well as to punish crime
and to protect its weak and vicious citizens, so far as it can,
from the temptation to do wrong. We would not tempt men to steal by
affording them easy opportunities for theft, especially if we knew
that they were either weak or wicked. And yet, we make absolutely no
effort to keep deadly weapons out of dangerous hands. We do attempt
to forbid their concealment. Practically this attempt is a failure
and, in effect, we permit men to carry deadly weapons which may be
successfully concealed until the very moment they are brought into use.
A great deal of the lurid literature has grown up around the
pistol. The cowboy with his gun play has always been an attractive
character in fiction. No doubt there is a time in the pioneer life
of a community when there seems to be some excuse for the use of the
revolver. But a dispassionate view of this subject, having in mind
the welfare of a settled, organized State, every part of which is
pervaded by law and within its restraining influence, points to the
conclusion that the time has come to legislate revolvers, dirks and
brass knuckles out of existence.