Post by Arjan Hut on Jan 5, 2021 4:58:39 GMT -5
"At the time of the order, mail-order gun sales were under investigation by the Senate's Dodd committee. For years, Oswald's alleged purchase of the rifle from Klein's under an assumed name has suggested to some Warren Commission critics that he was performing a task for the government in conjunction with it's investigation of the mail-order house."
Passage of the Gun Control Act was initially prompted by the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The President was shot and killed with a rifle purchased by mail-order from an ad in the magazine American Rifleman. Congressional hearings followed and a ban on mail-order gun sales was discussed, but no law was passed until 1968. At the hearings NRA Executive Vice-President Franklin Orth supported a ban on mail-order sales, stating, "We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States."
Precursors of the passage of the Gun Control Act were Senate Bill 1975 in 1963, "A Bill to Regulate the Interstate Shipment of Firearms," and Senate Bill 1592 in 1965, "A Bill to Amend the Federal Firearms Act of 1938." Both were introduced by Senator Thomas J. Dodd and met with fierce opposition on the floor but the bills also paved the way for the creation of the Gun Control Act of 1968.
The April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., shortly followed by the June 5 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, compounded by shifting societal attitudes towards gun ownership, renewed efforts to pass the bill. On June 11, 1968, a tie vote in the House Judiciary Committee halted the bill's passage. On reconsideration nine days later, the bill was passed by the committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee similarly brought the bill to a temporary halt, but as in the House, it was passed on reconsideration. House Resolution 17735, known as the Gun Control Act, was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 22, 1968 banning mail order sales of rifles and shotguns and prohibiting most felons, drug users and people found mentally incompetent from buying guns.
(Gun Control Act of 1968, Wikipedia, retrieved 1-5-21)