#will you push back against the idea that union actors having required break times is entitled?

[skimblyshanks]

The lack of regard for actors in general when it comes to labor rights within the arts is galling, actually.

[thewadapan]

It's Friday night.

You've locked yourself out.

The streets are empty.

> RETRACE STEPS

(I finished an MS Paint fan adventure.)

Creator’s Commentary

Normally, when I post stories on this blog, I throw the whole thing beneath the spoiler break - but that’s not really possible this time around. Click the link above if you haven’t read it yet - it only takes about ten minutes - then come back here if you want.

All done? Still with me? Okay, cool, because we’re going to be heading into spoiler territory here pretty quickly.

                               “RETRACE STEPS”

OPEN ON BLACK:

INT. – LATE AFTERNOON

A door opens on the right, spilling light into the threshold. The ceiling light automatically flickers on. Alice enters frame and heads to her door.

She tries the handle, but the door doesn’t budge. As her hand depresses the handle, the title briefly becomes visible.

We return to the original angle. Alice reaches into her left pocket, and finds nothing. She turns to lean against the door, facing the camera, and checks her right pocket, then the pockets of her hoodie. She tries the handle again, but the door is definitely locked. She leans, for a second, motionless.

           ALICE    Fuck.

She stalks out of the threshold, and the door closes behind her.

I. Making friends is harder than I thought.

When you’re a kid, people sorta make friends for you. Maybe your parents’ friends have kids, so suddenly those kids are your friends. Maybe you go to nursery or school, and then your classmates are kinda your friends too. At least some of those people will probably never stop being your friends. As you move through the education system, that cohort diffuses through the local schools - but chances are a few of your friends will stick with you all the way.

When you arrive at university, chances are you’re completely alone.

You’re thrown through the gauntlet of fresher’s week, forced to put yourself out there as you identify new friends and foes. One of the main attractions of university-managed accommodation - particularly catered accommodation - is that it places you with a huge amount of new people. Heck, part of the idea behind having a roommate is that they’re your “designated friend”.

(I didn’t have a roommate, and ended up going to university with two of my school friends, so these are less experiences and more observations - but that’s not to say I didn’t go out of my way to make new friends in those first weeks.)

After a month or so of the dreaded “three questions” (”What’s your name? Where are you from? What are you studying?”), the cliques have mostly solidified. The college relationships have crumbled, after one or both parties realised they were mostly in it for the sex. The cool people have long since stopped showing up to lectures. You haven’t gone back to any of the sports clubs and societies you signed up for. Maybe, just maybe, you’re occasionally glancing at your phone and wondering if you should finally give your parents a call to let them know you haven’t died.

If you’re lucky, you’ve met your new best friends. If you’re unlucky, then you’re very, very alone.

But of course, it’s not all down to luck.

She stalks out of the threshold, and the door closes behind her. Outside the threshold, there is a shot from the banister above of Alice walking down the stairs, facing away from the camera and typing on her phone.

Outside, Alice sits on the wall and stares at her phone. There is a brief montage of her slowly pacing up and down the path, leaning out into the road to check if anyone’s coming, checking her phone, peering into the downstairs window, kicking loose stones back into the gravel, and back to her sitting on the wall. After a few seconds, she puts her phone away and trudges out of frame across the stones.

II. Coming up with stories is harder than I thought.

I can’t exactly remember what I put my name down for during freshers’ week, but one way or another I ended up dragging a new friend to a writing workshop for my university’s filmmaking society. A bunch of strangers from all years were crammed around some tables that had been pushed together in our Student Union’s bar.

This guy, the head of the- president of the society? Sure, the President, let’s go with that. The President stands up and sorta fumbles his way through an introduction, before telling us to turn to the person next to us. I turn to my friend, because I don’t like talking to strangers. Then the President tells us (I might be misremembering here) that we’ve got one minute to come up with a story.

There’s a moment of awkward silence, because nobody wants to be the first person to start talking about the first dumb idea that’s popped into their head at those words.

Then the conversations start.

I went into that first minute expecting to come up with absolutely nothing. To be honest, I’m pretty sure we came up with nothing. I think there might’ve been some implication that they’d go around the table once time was up asking for quick summaries - this terrified me not just at the prospect of having to bluff my way through a pitch, but at the prospect of having to listen to everyone else do the same. Honestly, the moment that’s stuck in my mind most since was when I talked to the guy sitting on the other side of me, and he started trying to tell me about Lord of the Rings, which... okay, I don’t like Lord of the Rings, sue me, whatever. Someone else talked about the Batman movies at one point, and - actually, that might’ve been the same guy. Y’know what, I’ve gotten off track.

The point is that at some point during that meeting, Retrace Steps was born. I don’t remember when exactly, or how I came up with it - I suspect I’d locked myself out of accommodation at some point, or knew a friend who had, and thought it’d be funny to do a story where someone does that and can’t for the life of them get back in. In order to add complications, I decided that their roommate wouldn’t answer their texts, and that the residence office would be out of hours - and that was when the idea that everyone had disappeared came into my head.

INT. MAIN BUILDING – LATE AFTERNOON

Over-the-shoulder shot of Alice entering a corridor in the main building. The camera focuses on the sign saying ‘ON DUTY’, then pans across to the door to the general office. It focuses on another sign saying ‘The office is now closed...’, then across to another sign by the door with a phone number on it.

Foreground with Alice comes back into focus. She takes out her phone and dials.

           ALICE    Hello? I’ve locked myself out, do you have a spare...

She trails off, and puts the phone away. Clearly, someone’s answered but has hung up. Cut across for a close-up of her face, trying to figure out her next move.

SERIES OF BRIEF SHOTS:

Alice looks for her keys in:

A) a computer lab B) a library C) a laundry room D) a games room E) a bathroom

There are no keys, and no people. Alice goes to the kitchen and gets a mini-doughnut out from a box in a cupboard. She eats it thoughtfully. Once she’s finished, she reaches out to grab another, hesitates, and decides against it.

III. Making movies is harder than I thought.

A lot of the ideas being thrown around the table were for some pretty high-concept stuff, and I remember thinking - hang on, aren’t you supposed to actually be filming that? I’d approached the challenge from the angle of “what do I have, and what can I make with it”, not “what do I want to make, and how can I make it”. In an unfortunate twist of fate, my film - of all those that were conceived that day - would end up being far and away the worst. But I’ll get to that.

For a student film, the "everybody disappears and you’re locked out” concept made perfect sense - you could film it at your accommodation, you’d only need a single actor, and it’s a story that your audience will probably (if not immediately, then at least after another month or two) be able to relate to.

(Side note: I obviously hadn’t come up with this concept whole-cloth. Michael Grant’s Gone series of YA novels - which I’d finished reading midway through secondary school - is a superhero story about a bunch of kids on an island where all the adults have suddenly disappeared. More pertinently, Starscribe’s The Last Pony on Earth is the diary of someone who wakes up completely alone in their city, only in the body of a cartoon horse. Yes, Retrace Steps has its roots in My Little Pony fanfiction, and I’m very sorry about that.)

My friend wasn’t interested in sticking with the society - he mostly did it to back me up - but I guess I was. Knowing that most people would be angling for directorial roles, I signed up as a writer and threw together a script. An email came back the following day; apparently from el Presidente himself:

Thank you for sending the script Retrace Steps. As you have said in your original email, the script is quite short. But I do think it is a very intriguing concept nonetheless, one that is probably helped more so than hampered by its brevity. After all, the nature of your script would to a degree require an empty street, as well as a quiet hall, both of which are rare commodities indeed, especially during the weekends.

Anyways, since the script is well formatted, I will just offer a suggestion, one which I hope may help your final edit before the deadline, should you wish to do so.

Your script portrays excellently Sam's anxiety over the course of the narrative, from his inability to find his keys, then his inability to find anyone at all. I do however believe that you could make the final scene perhaps have more impact. How this is done depends on the overarching theme of the story you are telling, as what you would emphasize at the films' conclusion would depend on it.

Is it an allegory to the anxieties of the average student (Sam), who finds himself socially isolated by a sense of exile or ignorance of the larger community? Or is it perhaps more of an absurdist comedy, or even horror? Though I could wrong, I was under the impression that it was more likely to be the former than the latter. If so, could the story end with it emphasizing Sam's exclusion from society, such as a close up shot to the door and keyhole?

As with all feedback, you are under no obligation to take them to heart, and the things I pointed out are but small things to consider on an otherwise great piece of work. Thank you for making this piece available to the rest of the society.

It seemed that I’d successfully communicated the theme of isolation - less so the theme of entitlement. Bringing that theme to the fore would be my biggest challenge throughout subsequent drafts of the script (where I failed miserably) and the development of the fanventure (on which the jury’s still out).

(Those subsequent drafts would also see the characters “Sam” and “Chris” - those being the names of two friends I’d pegged as backup actors for the roles - get renamed as a more generic “Alice” and “Bob”.)

The Retrace Steps team consisted of a director, a producer, a cameraman/editor, and me. I met with the director only a couple of times - she seemed pretty competent, but decided that she couldn’t commit the time to the project and stepped down. Our producer was all too happy to take over the role.

Auditions started shortly after the teams were assigned - although I’d used male pronouns in the script, I’d anticipated that there’d be a greater demand for male actors (because most of the writers/directors would be male and most of the actors would be female) and planned to go into the auditions with no preference one way or another.

In truth, however, I think the gender of the story’s lead does have a noticeable impact on how it comes across - at least in film, where there’s no good means of narration. Speaking very broadly, when dealing with themes of isolation, I think the key question that comes to an audience’s mind is “why is this person isolated?” - and if the character is male, I feel like they’re more likely to assume the answer is a personal failure of some sort; there must surely be something wrong with him. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re in pretty deep on the internet, where I think these issues of perception are less pronounced - so if your instinct is to buck against those assumptions, well, I’m glad.

(The fanventure would end up using second-person narration, they/them pronouns and androgynous character designs to sidestep these issues entirely, while drawing the reader directly into the conflict.)

Our producer/director wasn’t able to make the callbacks (which felt like another red flag), so it was down to me to relay back to her what I thought of everyone. It was kind of a challenging process, because - as I’ve said - I don’t like talking to strangers and I certainly don’t like telling them what to do. Still, I was able to more-or-less settle into it, and eventually the director and I settled on a girl who seemed to know what she was doing. I feel a little bad for effectively putting her through the project, but the joke’s on us: within a year she’d been elected el Presidente of the entire students’ association. I can only assume that none of her opponents knew about the movie; it might’ve made for a pretty good smear campaign. Or not, nobody really cares about student politics anyway.

(The director couldn’t make it to the meeting where the society allocated the actors either. Basically, the President went through the actors one by one, and the teams would negotiate for each of them in turn. I’m fairly sure only one or two of the other teams were after the same actress as we were - I basically just said “we only need one cast member and we thought she’d do best,” and that was all it took; once that was settled I simply left and pretty much didn’t interact with any other members of the society in person until the screening. The other roles she could’ve got were minor anyway - although, in retrospect, she might’ve been better off.)

I think I’m not going to bother explaining exactly why the Retrace Steps short film turned out to be such a disaster. I’m pretty willing to pin the blame at the director’s feet - she’d arrange shoots at strange times with little notice, only to show up half an hour late herself. When she and I disagreed on part of the story, our cinematographer generally sided with her; she had the strongest personality of any of us, while I didn’t want to cause trouble. Our other team members - the actress and a lights guy who the society’d lumped with us (the lights ended up being a collaborative effort) - stayed out of it.

As the end of the semester approached, we were missing crucial swathes of footage. Our director pulled an ending out of her ass - a brief confrontation between myself-as-Bob and the actress, that... somehow involved custard creams? The script called for doughnuts, but we weren’t organised enough to have bought those in advance, and the biscuits were all we had at hand. I can’t actually remember exactly how it went, because it didn’t make any sense, but I remember enough to know that it actually ended up indirectly inspiring the execution of the revised ending present in the fanventure.

The end of the semester arrived. The society had hired out the small hall in the students’ union to screen all the movies. The screening started, and there was no sign of our director or cinematographer - they’d apparently been editing all afternoon. Eventually they arrived and sat down near myself and our actress.

I’m not gonna lie. What followed wasn’t the most embarrassing experience of my life. It probably wasn’t even in the top ten. But it was pretty embarrassing. All the movies were pretty awful in their own ways, but ours was uniquely terrible. To our director’s credit, she’d managed to cut the footage together into something we could maybe pass off as an absurdist comedy (which, to my own credit, had been kinda what I’d pictured in the first place - I’d just pictured something with a little more in the way of actual narrative). Even so, despite the awkward laughs - or perhaps because of them - it was atrocious.

I’ve only seen the movie once, at that screening, and I cringed the whole way through. Some time later, the director messaged me asking if I had a copy - apparently it hadn’t occurred to her to save one for herself, and our ex-cinematographer had gone AWOL - but I didn’t. Stupidly, I’d decided not to chase after one either, because in the moment I couldn’t imagine wanting to put myself through the experience of seeing it again. Almost half a year later, when I was almost done with the fanventure, I got back in touch with both the director and the society: I wanted to have the movie on hand so I could write about it in this commentary, but I didn’t say that, because I didn’t want to let on that I’d remade it as a frikkin’ webcomic. The person from the society said she knew someone who had a copy, and that she’d ask, but she never got back to me and by the time I remembered to chase her up it felt like it was too late to actually do so. It’s likely that the movie will never resurface - which I guess is good in a way, in that there’s no way in hell I’m gonna show it to any of you.

I was bitter. I wanted nothing to do with student societies. I wanted nothing to do with filmmaking, and haven’t made a film since - not unless you count Are You Happy, which I pretty much only made because I could do so entirely on my own. I’m much more leery about the prospect of collaborating with strangers, although I suspect that if an opportunity came my way I’d probably take it.

(Side note: last October, in an interaction which wound up being pretty excruciating in its own right, I contributed a satirical listicle to another society. This was a nightmare for a variety of reasons, but - suffice to say - it’s not particularly pleasant to discover that somebody’s made a bunch of edits to your work without telling you, especially if the changes are for the worse. I wish I had more positive things to say about collaboration, really, I do. Actually, I will say that my experiences working with others in the Transformers fandom have been pretty darn good - you can find details of that stuff over on the list of things I made.)

For a good while, I suspected that Retrace Steps would never see the light of day. I entertained the idea of rounding up a few of my friends and bashing the thing out myself over the course of a few weekends, but I ended up being pretty busy with other stuff. Besides, the society had the nice lights and cameras, and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of borrowing from them. Most of all, there was the tiny voice telling me that my script probably hadn’t ever been much good in the first place, and that I should switch back to pure prose - a medium with a much faster turnaround.

(That voice was right, as I’m sure you’re seeing for yourself. Look, it was a student film, there’s probably no such thing as a good student film - I’m just banking on fanventure-adaptation-of-a-bad-student-film still being fair game.)

EXT. STREET

Wide shot of Alice walking through the street, shouting. It is raining.

      ALICE   Hello? Is anybody there?

Overhead shot as she looks up and squints at the sky, then reaches back and lifts her hood.

Everything slows down. Cut to a side-on shot of Alice lifting her hood. A muted sound slowly turns into the jangle of keys as things speed up again. Cut across to medium shot face-on, as Alice looks confused. She reaches up with her other hand into her raised hood, and pulls out the keys. She holds them between two fingers, and the camera focuses on them.

      ALICE    Oh, for fuck’s sake.

IV. Talking about Retrace Steps without talking a little bit about Homestuck is harder than I thought.

Homestuck was this big multimedia webcomic that ran from 2009 to 2016. Homestuck was very good, and its unique “MS Paint Adventures” format inspired thousands of “MS Paint Fan Adventures” - some of which take Homestuck’s premise, but many of which are otherwise entirely original stories.

The oldest writing on this blog, in fact - presuming I haven’t hidden it out of mortification - is a rudimentary (and really god-awful) fanventure called You’ve Just Been FiRED. Don’t read it, it’s very, very bad, and I abandoned it after about thirty pages - some of which remain unpublished as of writing.

My second attempt at a fanventure, which - no joke - I wrote in the pages of my school planner during one exam season, is called SP00KY M4N0R; unlike traditional fanventures, which use the aesthetic of interactive fiction but none of the non-linear storytelling, this one was a fully-fledged choose-your-own-adventure story. In the following year’s planner, I started writing a spiritual successor called W1LT1NG (the setting of this one is slightly less self-evident: it took place inside an Egyptian pyramid). Neither of these stories have seen the light of day outside of a couple of my friends (and teachers) - but they might, so I’ll discuss them no further.

At some point in high school, I tried adapting SP00KY M4N0R for the web - first in MS Paint, then later in Photoshop CS2 - but put the project on the back burner and never really picked it back up again.

It wasn’t until after I joined the Homestuck Discord server that my interest in fanventures was rekindled. I became its 9615th member on the 6th of January, 2018 - in other words, a good while after we’d wrapped on Retrace Steps - but very quickly realised that its rate of activity was far to high for me to keep up with anything, duly muted it, and pretty much just forgot about it entirely.

Months later, something - presumably in either the Worth the Candle server or the Worm server - drew me back, and I found myself lurking there infrequently. On the 2nd of November, I briefly waded in - to ask some questions about Cordyceps - and after that, I think I lurked on-and-off for pretty much a whole month while I finished the remaining works on Makin’s List of Shills (if you’re wondering what all of these names in italics are, you might want to click that link). After that, I was pretty much there to stay.

A small but notable number of the server’s regulars ran fanventures of their own, and so I found myself becoming much more aware of the format than I ever had been while working on SP00KY M4N0R. Eventually, I decided I wanted to make something of my own - this was shortly after I’d finished working on Another Son, which had ended up being something of a mixed bag in a lot of ways - and hit upon the idea of adapting Retrace Steps as a fanventure.

You see, the thing about fanventures is that many of them begin with the same premise - “you are mysteriously alone”, and then things escalate as you learn more about the world the second-person protagonist has found themselves in. Retrace Steps has that same premise, with a very simple twist - the reason you are mysteriously alone is simply that nobody likes you.

SERIES OF SHOTS:

A) Alice re-enters the building B) She heads up the stairs, C) reaches the door to the threshold D) (a brief return to the original angle from the very beginning of the film) and enters the threshold. E) Extreme close-up of the key entering the lock. F) Over-the-shoulder shot as the door is unlocked and starts to open. G) (180-degree cut) She stares, dumbfounded at what she finds within. F) (Her POV) Her room is full of people, all holding red plastic cups and staring at her.

V. Drawing is harder than I thought.

Before I get into the meat of the work, I should probably give a broad overview of the process I used for creating the images - which, for the most part, was identical to the process I’d used for SP00KY M4N0R. The panels in Homestuck are 650px by 450px; in order to create a rougher (read: more forgiving) look, I halved these dimensions to 325px by 225px. I’d originally planned to scale the images back up to full size during publication, but ended up deciding that the negative space around the smaller frames helped create an atmosphere of isolation. Besides, I wasn’t sure if it’d be possible to scale the images back up without any anti-aliasing.

If you don’t know what anti-aliasing is, I’ll briefly explain - it’s when pixels at the edge of shapes in digital images get changed to a slightly different colour, to create smoother outlines. This works well at high resolutions, but at lower resolutions muddies detail and makes the image appear somewhat blurred - the effect is particularly pronounced if the images are entirely black and white. Homestuck avoids anti-aliasing pretty consistently, and doing so is a hallmark of the MSPA style.

Thankfully, Photoshop CS2 allows you to turn off antialiasing on pretty much every individual tool. I drew all the graphics using a 4px brush, but thanks to a beat-up old variable-pressure graphics tablet I could reduce this to 2px as needed. The 2px brush size was employed pretty heavily for detail in some of the busier environments, and at times I found myself using the selection tool to nudge stuff around at a pixel-by-pixel level.

Although Retrace Steps is adapted from a script, I’m pretty sure none of the dialogue from that script ended up making the jump into the second-person narration of the story. In fact, very few of the script’s locations remain either. The words and the artwork developed in tandem - I was rarely more than a few panels ahead in the script, and would generally let the physical on-panel action inform what was being written.

I occasionally looked up bits of reference - most notably to get some architectural details for the Tesco store - but otherwise winged it. Occasionally, in the more complicated images, I’d start out by drawing some perspective lines. For a couple of the images in the credits (specifically the cup and the Poké Ball) I went so far as to use autoshapes as guides, because I was struggling to draw passable circles freehand.

(No, those shapes on the right aren’t my attempts at circles, they’re the guide I used while drawing the doughnut.)

I’ll give more specific thoughts later, but broadly speaking I think my drawings suited the story I was trying to tell about as well as they could. I’m not an artist, and in the future I’m going to stray away from visual projects like this; the part I value most is the writing process, and I’d say that only a tiny fraction of the time I devoted to this project was actually spent writing. The flip side of that, of course, is that people generally much prefer stories with a visual aspect - it’s hard to convince them to read a webcomic, much less a prose story.

           ALICE    What the actual fuck are you all doing in my room?            BOB (somewhat passively)    Uhhh… didn’t you get my email?            ALICE    What email? Everyone in the room stares at her. Then, as one, they move to push her out of the room and shut the door. She protests, until-

           ALICE    This is my room!

           BOB (poking his head back into shot with mucho sass)    Yeah, but it’s not though, is it? He slams the door the rest of the way shut, and the lock clicks back into place.

Back to very first angle.

           ALICE (quietly, to herself)    What the actual fuck.

She knocks on the door loudly.

           ALICE (shouting, her face inches from the door)    This is my room!

Silence. She tilts her head forward, hitting the door with a sad thud. Then she turns and sits down, back to the door, and the camera cuts to join her at this new level.

She sits for a few seconds, thinking, then gets up again and leaves frame.

VI. Writing this commentary is harder than I thought.

Anyway, I figure the best way to get down into the details is to just start at the beginning and work my way through.

The first twenty panels take place in something of a liminal space - the corridor on which the reader’s room lies. I made sure never to show any of the other doors in the corridor; so far as the reader is concerned, they may as well not exist. The door is numbered “41″ - this being a truncation of “413″, the most ubiquitous of Homestuck’s so-called “meme numbers”. I kinda envisioned the room as being the first on the fourth floor of the building.

(If I’m feeling cheeky, I’ll say that the other doors are the ones up in the site’s navigation bar - they literally exist outside the scope of the panels.)

I probably didn’t spend as much time as I should’ve perfecting this environment - the door’s very wobbly. My first attempt placed it at the end of the corridor, but I didn’t like the way that looked at all.

Just in terms of the site itself, there’s a couple of things to take note of. The first is the solo cup sitting at the top of page, next to the advertisement, which is also the story’s icon on the site - and its only splash of colour (well, except in the ads, which I don’t have any control over). The second is that the link to the next panel is “->” - a slight variation on the command used by Homestuck, which was “==>”. The significance of this should be obvious to Homestuck readers, but I’ll comment no further on either of these details until later.

(Fun fact: I didn’t find out that those big red American plastic party cups had an actual proper name, and that that name was frikkin’ solo cup, until well into the fanventure’s development, if not after I’d finished it entirely. One of my friends used the term in passing conversation - I can’t remember what about, because I was too busy freaking out internally. It’s like pottery; it rhymes.)

On panel 3 - once they’ve walked into the corridor - the lights have turned on, and the entire colour scheme for the comic flips. The idea of having automatic lights was present in the original script, but it wasn’t until pretty late in the fanventure’s development that I decided to make them plot-relevant!

Out of all the images, it’s the close-up of the door on panels 5-7 that comes closest to matching a shot description in the script. The original idea was that the door being locked was the inciting incident that would lead the protagonist to go look for their keys - so the title/command “RETRACE STEPS” would literally appear as they pressed the handle. In the first draft of that panel, this was in fact the case - but my prereaders didn’t think it looked that great, and I was inclined to agree; besides, the title also appeared prominently on the title page and during the credits.

It’s not until panel 7 that we get any words at all - a simple “huh”. In the original script, I made relatively heavy use of profanity in Alice’s dialogue - this was supposed to signify hostility. I wasn’t happy with how this came across, and completely backpedalled in the fanventure - the second-person narration is entirely devoid of swears. I wanted to portray your inability to curse to as a deficiency: you’re unable to fully express yourself. Like most aspects of your character, this isn’t something you’re supposed to consciously notice or understand until after the story’s twist is revealed.

Panel 8 includes a command: “Try door again.” Generally speaking, the commands used in Retrace Steps are much more perfunctory than those in Homestuck - they’re almost entirely devoid of snark, with many being only a single word.

This entire sequence has a lot of legwork to do in terms of laying out the situation in a believable manner without giving too much away. On panel 14, the narration lists your inventory: a phone, a packet of tissues, and a wallet. The phone and the wallet both play direct roles in the narrative, but I consciously chose to include the tissues because I think the word itself has connotations with illness, sadness, and loneliness.

It’s worth noting that these items are those that I personally carry about in real life. Other than the abstract geography of the corridor, this is perhaps the clearest example of me drawing directly from my own day-to-day experiences. The word “self-insert” is kind of a dirty word in a lot of ways, but the truth is that I wanted the protagonist of Retrace Steps to serve as both a self-insert and an audience surrogate. This is why I felt like the MSPA format would serve the story well.

(None of that is to say that you should draw conclusions about me as a person based on the behaviour of the character in the story. Superficially, they share a lot of my tics, but their actual thought processes and motivations are different in many ways.)

Panels 17-19 are just repeated images of the empty corridor; the lights turn off on panel 20, and the site’s colours briefly flip again. Heading into this project, I had the rough idea that I wanted to tell the story in a “nice” number of pages - maybe a hundred, maybe less, maybe more. I decided that, if I repeated the door image, I’d have a buffer to use to shorten or lengthen the final page count as needed - but that turned out not to be necessary. This little span establishes that the lights in the corridor are on a timer, a fact which turns out to be relevant down the line.

The first scene change occurs on panel 21, which shows a stairwell. My original version of this sequence confused basically everyone who saw it - I’d envisioned the camera as being at the bottom, looking up, but everyone presumed I’d done it from the top down. The current approach makes much more sense, as all of the lines of action in the image point towards its centre.

As you descend the stairs and thinks about your roommate, the narration rambles much more. In this story, I decided that use of the internet would be a signifier for loneliness in some way - the roommate has an old-fashioned phone and communicates only by text. I wanted to give the impression that they’re bad at checking their messages; preferring instead just to talk to people face-to-face. That’s not the whole story, though - to a certain extent, they actively ghost you.

Once more, I’m drawing pretty heavily from my own life experiences for this sequence. For a long time in high school, I used to have a terrible flip phone - my parents didn’t want me to have anything better. I eventually upgraded to a terrible smartphone, which I mostly used to play Hill Climb Racing and Glow Hockey. Late in high school, I wound up using a bulky Kindle Fire as a portable computer, with my brother’s old terrible smartphone in case I needed to call anyone; the phone was pretty much always out of battery. It was only within the last six months - halfway through my second year of university - that I got an actual honest-to-god good smartphone. This stuff becomes relevant again later, during the Pokémon GO sequences.

(As I said earlier, I didn’t have a roommate, but my neighbour did - his roommate kept strange hours, and I’m pretty sure most nights he didn’t come back to accommodation to sleep. They got along, but there was an arrangement in place there.)

The image of seeing someone at meals but never speaking to them struck me as a fairly strong one - in student accommodation, you’re forced to interact with people because you use the same amenities, but the extent to which you actually communicate with those people is a matter of personal choice. The narration uses the word “sit”, which I think implies a lack of understanding of that element of choice - you don’t sit together, therefore you cannot speak. The idea that you totally could sit together just doesn’t occur to you.

Anyway, panels 25-33 take place immediately outside the building. With public buildings like this, people who smoke are unlikely to stray far from the door - and the smell lingers for a while after they’re finished. Public smoking has always been one of my pet hates - I’m asthmatic - but I consider the extent to which it bothers me to be something of a character flaw. The protagonist of Retrace Steps is kinda built of flaws like this: things which sound reasonable but are rooted in their lack of empathy.

The narration uses the word “ramble” to describe the text sent to your roommate - later on, we learn that the word “rant” might’ve been more accurate.

This is the point where the story itself notes that it’s a Friday night - a fact which was previously stated in the very first line of its description. The idea of not doing anything on a Friday night is a pretty common symbol for loneliness; it’s the night when most people go out with friends, at the conclusion of the workweek. Tropes are tools - if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The other symbol for loneliness in this sequence is slightly less obvious, I think - it’s when the reader kicks a single stone out onto the path. The narration notes that they “don’t know” why they did that; this was intended to mirror the story’s central mystery. In the original version, they kicked the stone from the path back in amongst the rest - the idea being that they’d kinda fallen by the wayside, and wanted not to be alone. I kinda go back and forth on which version I prefer, but they get the same thing across.

Panels 34-35 are each “unique” images, in that they only recur in the credits. It felt like a waste to spend a long time drawing complicated images like this without reusing them in any capacity, but I’m glad I did.

The first of these unique images was supposed to convey the city’s emptiness in a clear way. It’s probably one of my favourites, even if it’s pretty rough in places. The forced perspective is more strongly felt in this image than in any other in the fanventure, and it led me to mess up the scale of the protagonist - this was something that I only fixed after the comic was otherwise pretty much done.

I was on the fence as to whether or not to include the billboard. A lot of the imagery in the fanventure is very on-the-nose, but the billboard is easily the most blatant in this respect - the protagonist completely ignores the concept of self-improvement so they can play Pokémon GO. I ended up showing the panel to an uncredited friend, and they convinced me it was a good idea to keep it in.

The Pokémon GO stuff is pretty much when the fanventure jumps the shark, to be honest. You can tell, because the command - “Pokemon GO on your phone” - is a reference to a dumb thing Hillary Clinton said during the 2016 American presidential election.

See, the thing is, the vast majority of the game’s mechanics are designed to encourage going outside and interacting with others - you can ignore or circumvent this, but it’ll cost you one way or another. Which is fascinating to me! The game is easiest if you go out of your way to make friends with other people who play the game. This is a common theme throughout much of Nintendo’s output - and it somehow usually feels less cynical than the kinds of forced interaction you find in many other mobile games.

The bit that’s really fascinating, however, is the lengths people go to avoid these inconveniences. They’ll buy both versions of each new Pokémon game, rather than trading with someone who has the version they didn’t buy! They’ll buy a second Nintendo DS, just so they can get the Pokémon from one game to another! I can’t begrudge them, because I’ve certainly done similar things myself in the past, but I think you can certainly frame it in a way where it looks like all these gamers treat social interaction as an obstacle to overcome. Who’d’ve thought?

The narration on panel 37 ended up going through several revisions, thanks to feedback from Gitaxian. Back when I was new to the Homestuck Discord, Gitaxian was one of the people who made me feel welcome - we both really like this one obscure essay about the live-action Transformers movies (and totally recommend that you should read it). He responded pretty positively to Everything Is Red Now, a Spider-Man comic I made over a year ago, and was my first choice for a prereader on Retrace Steps.

Gitaxian found the sequence in its original form to be a little over-detailed, and suggested that I change its tone from “explaining the game” to “complaining about the game”. He also noted that making it “rantier” would be a way of concretely validating the roommate’s perspective. I followed his advice, and I’m much happier with where the story ended up as a result.

Knowing I’d be revisiting these panels later in the story, I ended up taking the time to polish them up a little: I added details of a fence and path in the background, and tweaked the hand in the foreground. By this point, I was starting to get pretty tired of drawing; of the project in general. I’d put aside other things I was working on, and had academic assignments to deal with as well.

Panel 40 is one of a couple of panels that I feel would benefit from similar polishing. The idea was that it’d be a top-down view of the street, with two streetlamps providing light. The round shadows would give the impression of a pair of eyes or binoculars, with the lampposts themselves being pupils - tying into the paranoia described in the narration.

I thought that, by zooming out and letting the darkness creep into frame, I’d be able to force something of a tonal shift - and I think I was reasonably successful in this regard, particularly as the colours of the site itself flip once more. The prose also shifts slightly in tone, as the tail-end of the rant leads into the realisation that something’s wrong.

In its original form, people were confused by the image - the shading wasn’t nearly heavy enough, and the composition was unusual. This is where the art style works against me; I only have two colours to work with, and it can be hard to distinguish between detail and shadow at such a low resolution.

(There’s an animated music video for SIAMÉS’ “The Wolf” which uses a similar monochrome-plus-red palette to Retrace Steps - I saw it long before development on the story started and forgot about it until just now, so I don’t think it was an influence on the fanventure, but it’s definitely worth a watch!)

In the very first draft of the script, the protagonist found the key to their room in their hood. Seriously. Like, it’d start raining, they’d put their hood up and there’d be the key. I couldn’t think of a good ending, so I just came up with something daft and called it a day. The “doughnut offering” aspect of the story didn’t appear until I redrafted the script, a little ways into the film’s development (probably before we shot anything), but I can’t remember exactly how it came about. Originally, the script simply ended with the door getting slammed shut - the last line being a “what the actual fuck” from Sam/Alice.

(At the time when I was writing the story, I didn’t make a habit of buying mini doughnuts. I still don’t, except for on some occasions when I’m eating at a friend’s house and want to bring something low-commitment - even then, it’s usually cookies or muffins or full-sized doughnuts. Presumably, it was Retrace Steps which influenced that particular habit.)

On at least a literal level, the story’s message is “buy people doughnuts if you want them to be friends with you”. But naturally the actual message - and, I think, the reality - is that it’s not so transactional; really it’s just about assuming the best of people and being nice to them. Of course, there’s plenty of pitfalls in that approach - I’d be tempted to write a whole ‘nother story about them, if I didn’t think it’d end up being a little too dark and deconstructive. Be nice! That’s all I’m saying.

At least when I was writing the script, I’d actually planned for the protagonist to buy doughnuts from the local Sainsbury’s store. We have a Tesco store as well, plus a bunch of bigger supermarkets, but the Sainsbury’s is usually the quietest - it’s expensive and poorly-stocked. Plus, I just felt like it’d look better on-camera.

(If you’re not from the UK, all you need to know is that Tesco and Sainsbury’s are the two biggest supermarket chains. Well, apparently Asda overtook Sainsbury’s last month, but we’ll see how long that lasts. I’d say they’re generally pretty-much-indistinguishable, but at least in my mind I associate Sainsbury’s more closely with the middle classes - Tesco, meanwhile, is ubiquitous.)

When it came to adapting the script, I realised I could use any supermarket I wanted, and I picked Tesco. Specifically an “Express” store, which is a smaller shop found in town centres and the like. It fitted the story better - and besides, I’ve always liked the colloquialism “Tescos”. As in “aight mum I’m poppin off Tescos, our Jack says they’ve got a bogof on Lucozade, works out a quid for two litres so I’m buzzin, you after anythin or nah”.

(As part of let’s-call-it-research for the story, I found an eight-page thread on Mumsnet where a mum asks “am I being unreasonable to get really annoyed with people who call Tesco ‘Tescos’?” - this was immensely funny to me, and pretty much cemented my decision to use a real supermarket in the story as opposed to a made-up one.)

So yeah, panels 41-44 take place outside this Tescos. It was my brother - credited as “patipon” - who noted that I needed to use more solid black in the image. Most of what we discussed about the story took place in voice calls, which is a shame; historically, it’s been uncommon for me to solicit him for feedback on projects like this one. I consulted him on several of this story’s panels - he devotes much more time to graphics and artwork than I do - and his suggestions were always useful.

The prose on panel 43 is probably one of the bits I’m most proud of. It’s an awkward mix of metaphors coming from a character who isn’t used to being able to think when they’re at this particular place. I like the phrase “fumbled passes in the aisles” a lot.

(Gospar, one of my IRL friends and another prereader on Retrace Steps, occasionally graces us with the saying “ah, another day, another butchered social interaction”. Meanwhile, I went through a short-but-embarassing phase of butchering the trivial social interaction of “how are you?” by replying “I’m here” - something which I can’t excuse, but which I sure can immortalise in a webcomic.)

(All of this talk of Tescos reminds me of a draft I’ve had sitting around on my hard drive forever - the beginning of a first chapter which I wrote early in secondary school. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic snow-covered Britain where people travel around in sailboats on skis, and opens with some guy going into a buried Tescos for supplies. There, he runs into some orphan, who persuades the guy to let him hitch a ride on the snow-boat - snoat? Sure, whatever, snoat. The twist was going to be that the guy was planning to nuke some settlement, for reasons which I never wrote down and have since forgotten, and the kid would work this out and have to kill the guy to stop him. I note this simply to say that, while my stories may have gotten slightly less dumb and bad since I started writing, it seems that Tescos will be an enduring feature.)

(Wintry post-apocalyptic settings will also be an enduring feature, come to think of it: around the time I was writing Retrace Steps, I was also running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign for some friends which was basically standard fantasy - only it was set on an infinite-in-every-direction ski slope. I’m not a very good Dungeon Master, so I let the campaign die after a handful of sessions over the course of the year - which is a shame, because I’d planned a KILLER TWIST for that story too. Anyway, enough nonsense - back to Pokémon GO.)

I suppose at this point I should note that the two Pokémon you run into are Dugtrio and Magneton. These two are the evolved forms of Diglett and Magnemite, and are kinda-unique in that they’re literally just three of their previous stage grouped together. Hopefully, the symbolism of someone trying to obtain these Pokémon - and only succeeding after offering them a berry - should be clear enough.

(Note that the narration on panel 46 says you’re “not sure why this thing wants the berry” - at this point in the story, the protagonist doesn’t understand the significance of gestures like this.)

(I’ve yet to obtain either of these Pokémon in-game myself; Diglett and Magnemite are surprisingly hard to come by.)

The second half of the fanventure - from panel 51 all the way to panel 100 - takes place back inside the corridor. There’s a lot in the way of repeated panels with very little narration here - I was going for a more introspective tone, and this seemed like a good way to achieve that.

On panel 52, the narration notes that you plan to message your internet friends, then call your parents. It’s a little beat, but I felt like there was something kinda sad about the idea of having a closer connection with people you’ve never met than with your own parents. This is a pretty irrational way of looking at it - in my experience, most people on the internet who talk about their parents have pretty frayed relationships with them. Besides, there are plenty of cases where random peers will be better-equipped to help with specific problems - it’s just a case of balancing that against the fact that your own parents will probably care about you far more than any of those people.

I wanted to convey the image of someone who has the vast majority of their social interactions online. This theme is crucial to Homestuck itself, but while Homestuck demonstrates it by communicating its story pretty much entirely in chatlogs, in Retrace Steps I try to communicate it by showing everything except the chatlogs. Homestuck kills off everyone except a bunch of internet friends and their guardians; Retrace Steps just quietly omits everyone except a bunch of strangers standing in a room ha ha ha whoops spoilers.

Anyway, on panel 53, we start to see an environmental change caused by these strangers. For the first time, it seems like you’re not completely alone in this world.

The light's motion-activated - it turns on when you open the door, and then turns off again after around ten minutes. You've been gone much longer than that... meaning somebody else must have triggered it since then.

While working on this commentary, I decided that the original text of panel 55 - present in the story since its original release on 04/04/2019 and preserved in the above quote - was kinda overwrought and clumsy. Usually I’m pretty loathe to make edits to a story after it’s out on the internet, but this one felt acceptable - “Why was the light on when you arrived?” is much more succinct way of communicating what’s going on.

This panel’s artwork is also pretty clumsy - in case you’re having trouble parsing it, that’s supposed to be your head at the bottom. I tried to put a bit of light shading on it, but I’m not really happy with the result. Like I say, at this point I was getting pretty tired of drawing. Nah, I’m not changing it.

On panel 58, there’s a rare bit of onomatopoeia as you finally think to knock on the door. The negative space encroaches in from the right... but what does it hide?

Oh hey, it’s your roommate!

I think to a certain extent, this is another confusing image - Gitaxian observed that it didn’t really make much sense spatially. It’s kinda supposed to be a side-on cutaway, but that doesn’t really come across - I briefly tried adding a wood grain, to communicate that it’s the open door, but that didn’t make much sense at this scale and only confused matters further. In the end, I tweaked the boundary between the door and the corridor to give the impression of a couple of hinges and called it a day.

Panel 61 is, I guess, the big twist. You wanted to know where everyone is? Surprise! They’re in your room! Having a party! And you weren’t invited!

I wanted the reader to have a second to contemplate this, so the next couple of panels swap back-and-forth between you and the doorway. To underscore the silliness of the twist, one of the people in the back takes a big long sluuuurp from their solo cup - this breaks the spell, and you point for them all to leave.

It’s panel 67 that breaks the narration for the first time in the story. I wanted to present the roommate’s dialogue as a sharp contrast to the inner voice of the protagonist - it’s full of abbreviations, completely devoid of punctuation, and written entirely in solo-cup-red. The roommate simply sighs that you “never change”, and slams the door on you (with yet another cheeky bit of onomatopoeia appearing on-panel).

The idea that being around other people somehow supplants your inner thoughts is a very deliberate one - the commands cease entirely, the narration goes away. In these moments, we see you how everyone else sees you - as someone who’s pretty much entirely silent. On panels 69-70 there’s simply some ellipses, which kinda lengthen into a brief return of narration as you’re left on your own once more.

The reason this party’s taking place in “YOUR room” - as noted in the narration on panel 71 - is simply to show a feeling of entitlement. On the surface, you’re mad that you can’t get into your room - but you're also just feeling like people should invite you to parties.

Hopefully, the questions on panel 72 and panel 74 should be answering themselves by this point. You don’t know it at the time, but these will prove to be the last pieces of narration in the story.

After you’ve had some time to sit in the corridor and feel sorry for yourself, your roommate starts feeling bad and comes out to offer a sincere-but-backhanded apology. We’re into the last quarter of the comic now - starting with panel 76, there’s no text outside of what is spoken by your roommate.

The command used to advance to the next page has changed from “->” to “-->”. The story isn’t about just one person any more.

(This device is lifted directly from Homestuck, which switched from the command “==>” - used when the comic had four main characters - to “======>” when it swapped to a cast of twelve. Many fanventures - such as Oceanfalls - riff on this concept further, and mine is no exception.)

Out of all the text in the story, I’m probably happiest with the monologue on panel 79 and panel 80. I think it speaks for itself.

(As I always find myself saying, these commentaries kinda show that I don’t trust my stories to speak for themselves. I did hold off on writing this one for a couple of months, but there was lots of behind-the-scenes stuff I wanted to get on the record and I ultimately couldn’t help myself. The truth is that pretty much nobody reads these things - the commentaries, or the stories they’re for - and so the whole thing’s pretty much for my own benefit. I get to declare what I was going for, you get to decide whether or not I got it.)

Panels 81-95 are pretty much a frame-by-frame animation of you offering your roommate the doughnuts, and them leading you into the party. It’s basically two actions, but I try my best to draw them out as long as possible - by this point, the story’s said pretty much everything it needs to, and now it’s all just... emotional payoff? I feel like I’ve never been much good with character arcs, but I’m proud of how this turned out.

As promised, panels 96-99 are a straight repeat of panels 17-19 - the automatic lights turn off and the site’s colours flip for the last time, neatly mirroring the story’s first two panels in its last two.

Back in the kitchen, she opens the cupboard again and grabs the box of mini doughnuts.

She returns to her door and knocks again.

           ALICE    I bought doughnuts?

There is a long pause. The door suddenly opens and Bob pokes his head around, reaches out to grab like three doughnuts from the box, and then darts back inside. The door slams shut again.

           ALICE    Hey!

VII. Animation is harder than I thought.

This story is titled Retrace Steps because, in its original script form, it mostly focused on somebody retracing their steps in the hopes that they’d find their keys. The fanventure, however, drops this aspect of the plot entirely - leaving it with something of an artifact title. Maybe I should’ve come up with an alternate title, but I didn’t. On some level, it now simply refers to the trip to Tescos - on another, I think it implies that something’s been lost. I think it was the nagging feeling that the title no longer held enough significance that led me to create the story’s final flash.

If you haven’t read Homestuck, all you need to know is that pages with commands that are prefixed with an “[S]” are usually longer animations set to music, used for particularly important moments in the plot (or, just as often, for random chicanery). Having a flash of this sort is a point of prestige for fanventures - especially if it approaches any real length of complexity. I’d vaguely liked the idea of letting music play a fairly prominent role in the short film, and it felt right to return to those roots.

There wasn’t really any question as to which song I’d pick, either. See, back in college, I ran this terrible meme page called Summer Meme Sundae. It was absolute garbage. Please don’t click that link. Basically, its deal was that - for the latter half of its run - I tried to introduce something of a plot across the “memes”, wherein the page’s mascot got castaway and wound up in Australia. It was very silly and absolutely incomprehensible. Like I say, don’t look at it. This isn’t reverse psychology, it’s legitimately unfunny and bad. Anyway, the last post I made was something of a rudimentary flash in its own right - set to “Pizza for Breakfast” from The Meme Friends’ Last Week’s Pizza EP. I know basically nothing about The Meme Friends, but I thiiink they were some randos on 4chan’s /mu/ board.

It’s fair to say that the aesthetic of Last Week’s Pizza, which includes such tracks as “Cold Pizza”, “Everyone I Ever Loved is Now Dead”, and “Executive Pizza Party (Business)”, kinda appeals to me. If you’re reading Retrace Steps, the chances that you’ve heard the track before are next to nil - it comes with zero baggage. Moreover, it’s from a freely-distributed independent project created by a collective that hasn’t put out anything in years - it’s extremely unlikely that anybody’s going to come and tell me off for using it.

I specifically picked “No Forks, No Knives, It’s Pizza Time” because I felt like its tone was closest to that of the story, and because it has a relatively short runtime of just over two minutes - which still ended up being a little too long, but I don’t think it turned out too bad.

The flash opens on the image of the door in the corridor from the previous panel, which is gradually cut into smaller and smaller pieces by black lines until it disappears altogether. Cue title. One of the reasons I like the flash format - aside from the lack of antialiasing - is that you really have no way of telling how long the video’s going to be or what happens except by watching it. There’s none of YouTube’s functionality for skipping around - you’re forced to sit and watch the entire thing start-to-finish without stopping.

(I think Retrace Steps is definitely best read in a single sitting, and the final flash is a big part of that. My fourth prereader, Multivac of the Homestuck Discord server, was unable to watch the flash at first - I forget why - and found the story unclear. After watching the flash, he seemed to backpedal on this sentiment. Time will tell whether his initial assessment was correct; I picked Multivac because he’d previously responded positively to Everything Is Red Now, and because I’d usually consider his reaction to something to be a pretty decent rough baseline for the general reaction of the Homestuck Discord server.)

When stuff starts happening, it starts happening fast - you see the protagonist’s descent down the stairs again, but this time you see all three panels at once, as if there’s more than one person on the stairs. The minute you get outside, you start seeing entirely new people - many with red accents of some kind. Someone smoking, someone who’s been shopping, someone with a rucksack...

The people outside Tescos had a little more in the way of thought put into them. On the left, there’s a homeless person, and someone walking by with headphones on. Over on the far right, there’s someone holding their phone out in front of them - they’re wearing a hat famously worn by Ash Ketchum in the Pokémon anime, just in case there’s any doubt as to what game they’re playing. Someone sorta tired-looking crosses away from the rest. Everyone in the frame’s kinda collectively ignoring the two people holding hands.

(Textually, Retrace Steps is a story about... platonic fulfillment? If that’s a phrase that makes sense? My personal take is that the protagonist of this story struggles to create and maintain friendships. However, I tried to leave room for interpretation - particularly in terms of this section of the flash - and I think a reading definitely exists that brings in more romantic subtext.)

(Actually, I already kinda explored this last year - much less effectively - in Another Son. Like in that story, I wanted the audience to understand why the characters are lonely - but I used a much more sympathetic approach this time around, which crucially makes you actually want the story’s protagonist to stop being lonely. Something which bothers me about certain stories - and this is a really common failing of music videos, which lack the introspection of prose - is when the narrative takes its protagonist and frames things in a way which says “you should feel sorry for this person” while they proceed to do really unsympathetic things. If you’re going to give them a victory, the audience should feel like they actually deserve it!)

After a brief segment where you finally catch that Dugtrio, the flash cycles back through the various locations until we arrive back in the corridor. This sequence was added mostly to pad for time, but also serves to bring things full circle for the flash’s final shots. On the final beats of each bar - which fall on a higher note - the colours flip; this was purely an aesthetic choice.

The next section of the flash is just credits, which I kinda wanted to use to lull the audience into a false sense of security. See, the original plan was for the final image of the comic to just be you, standing completely alone, holding a solo cup - an ending which I think is much more ambiguous.

I still think this original ending provokes a much stronger emotional reaction - and indeed, it did at the time. As Gospar said, “also you sure you wanna keep the sad end / I think the fade out on others and the static / sort of implied they hadn’t changed?” Gitaxian agreed - “I think having the crowd fade to just the two of them, and then ending there, would be the best ending”. I’d already considered doing that, but had decided against it for reasons I’ve forgotten.

See, by this point in the story, you’ve made this connection with your roommate - but everyone else remains a stranger. I like this ending for its optimism: instead of saying “you're still alone”, it says “this is a good start”.

Oh, and remember the solo cup that’s been sitting up next to the ad? Yeah, that’s gone now.

She protests and knocks on the door again. Just before she kicks it, it suddenly opens again. Bob has like three doughnuts in his mouth.

           BOB    These are pretty good actually.

He grabs the whole box and opens the door fully, lightly beckoning for Alice to enter. She does so. The door closes.

We cut to inside the room. Everyone is standing in cramped, uncomfortable silence. Somebody hands Alice a red plastic cup.

CUT TO BLACK.

THE END

VIII. Knowing when to shut up is harder than I thought.

I just went to Tescos and bought a box of mini doughnuts.

(I didn’t set out to do that, but they were selling a single box for next to nothing and I felt like it was too serendipitous to ignore.)

It’s the end of the year. Classes finished over a month ago. I always end up staying for a good while after, because doing so gives me more time to work on projects like this, but most of my friends end up leaving before me - in other words, I don’t have anyone to share the doughnuts with.

(They have strawberry-flavoured icing and multicoloured sprinkles, and they taste frikkin’ great, so I can’t say I’m too beat up about that.)

I’ve played very little Pokémon GO since I started working on this fanventure. I... think I kinda ruined it for myself?

When I finished Retrace Steps, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to do the fanventure format for a while. That lasted all of about four days, after which I started Huskyquest. It seems silly to give away this new fanventure’s plot here, so all I’ll say is this: it’s got dogs in it, it’s got more than three colours, and you should definitely drop it a like because I’ll hopefully be picking it back up again pretty soon.

In the meantime, feel free to peruse all the other things I made on this blog! There should be another project coming out here very soon, so if you wanna be informed when that happens, drop me a follow either here or on twitter. And of course, if you have any questions, my ask box is always open. Thanks for reading!

...You’re still here?

It’s over.

Pokémon GO home.

> Go.

[kalelblogdanove]

What It Takes To Be A Voice Actor REDUX

In 2015 I wrote a blog about what it takes to be a successful voice actor. I have since come to feel that I was perhaps a little too discouraging in tone. There are plenty of voices in the world to say “no” to your dreams. I don’t wish to be one of them. So here is my previous article on the matter, re-released and annotated to reflect my current thinking.

Old essay in plain text or bold. New thoughts struck throughstruck through and replaced with italics.

 I’m going to offer two kinds of advice. First I will touch on passion, work ethic and other similarly rarefied intangibles—the habits and the mentality required to succeed. Only then will I move on to some nuts-and-bolts advice—the stuff you can take to the bank… or the booth, as the case may be.

A few caveats:

I am not a voice actor.

I have directed many wonderful voice actors. I know a lot about what “the biz” is looking for, and I know what I myself am looking for in a good voice actor. But I have done very little professional acting.

This is art, not science.

This is an art form, and like any art form it is squishy. There are no hard-and-fast rules, just guidelines, and the guidelines are riddled with exceptions. Like…keeping your eyes open is a basic rule of effective stand-up comedy, right? Well, tell that to Gilbert Gottfried or Mitch Hedburg. The same goes for VO—a certain amount of wiggle room is inherent.

Some people might disagree with me.

That’s okay! My opinion is subjective, and the industry is always in flux. There are lots of different opinions out there, and if you are a professional and you have one, please send it to me so I can make it available here, and incorporate it into my own understanding.

There is no magic bullet.

It is not a 1+1=you’rethenextNolanNorth scenario. You can follow all these guidelines and still find yourself working at The Cheesecake Factory for years. There is no shame in that. A big ingredient to success is luck. The other major ingredient is persistence and that brings me to…

Part 1: This Is A Very Hard Job To Get

Before you decide to become a voice actor it is essential that you have an understanding of what it will take to break in.

You must love it enough to spend as many as five years breaking in, working other jobs, spending money on classes and demos, and being relentlessly hardworking and self-improving, without landing a single gig. Some people waltz right in. Others have to batter down brick walls. You must be prepared to do the latter. If you are not, do yourself a favor and pick a different career.

Kal 2017: Actually, try this career. ALWAYS try to follow your dreams. You and you alone will know if you’ve had enough and want to do something else. Might take a month, might take five years, might be never. Pick the career you love, don’t let anyone tell you not to.

Let’s revisit those words “relentlessly hardworking and self-improving.”

Throughout your career, but particularly when you are breaking in, you will be competing against the very best actors in the world. You might be talented to begin with, but that is not enough. You MUST MUST MUST push yourself to be better, ALWAYS. I guarantee that your competition will.

Kal 2017: This remains true, but I temper it by saying do not worry if you are not the best to start with. Skills can be built over time. The most important thing is that you have a fun and happy life doing something you enjoy. You can actually hear the sound of stress in a performance, and it’s not a good sound. Try to relax and have fun!

This means acknowledging early-on that you always have something to learn, and then being proactive about learning it. Read books, and take classes.

TAKE CLASSES!

Take voice acting classes, take stage acting classes, take directing classes, take breath work, take improv, take puppetry, take singing lessons. If you can, take an animation class or two. Since you’re going into audio, you might try to learn a bit about audio engineering/editing.

Kal 2017: Side note on this last idea. It is a great idea, if you are moving to Hollywood to do something fun and crazy, to pick up a production/postproduction skill like film/video editing, audio engineering/mixing/mastering, AfterEffects/graphics etc. These disciplines are a great and generally flexibly scheduled way to make a good living while you try to break into the job you’re passionate about.

Why? Because people love to shoot and record, but hate to edit/do post. Post work is an art, but it is also a trade, like plumbing—labor that HAS to get done before anything can be released. If you can get good and fast at this, and you don’t mind spending hours working on reality TV, web content, and infomercials, you can make some sweet bank. You’ll often be your own boss, and even when you’re not, postproduction people tend to be the most chill. Plus you’ll likely make some great contacts within your chosen field as well.

For instance, you can work at a recording studio, and meet voice actors, directors, and producers who have already broken in. If you do an awesome job with a good attitude, and help them be successful in their endeavors, they will be predisposed to say “yes” down the road when you ask for that audition, that recommendation to an agent, that free coaching session.

Believe me, anything and everything related to performance or art will be valuable, even if it is not VO-based.

I want to give a particular shout out to Shakespearean acting techniques, particularly those pioneered by Kristen Linklater. Almost all the best actors I have known have a serious grounding in that material.

Kal 2017: This is a great time to recommend some LA coaches who are awesome. I really like:

Bill Holmes @vodoctor

Andrea Romano

Kalmenson & Kalmenson @kalmenson

The Voice Actor’s Network with Hope Levy @hopelevysings

JB Blanc @thejbblanc  — Side note about this one. In addition to being a fantabulous actor, director, and coach, JB is also one of the leading experts on dialects. If you are international and looking to lose your accent, JB is the guy. If you are looking to acquire an accent for a role, JB is the guy.

And of course, me @kalelbogdanove

I’ll try to update with some reliable classes/coaches in other cities.

Also, remember to take movement classes like dance or martial arts. I know it sounds odd, since you will not be physically seen by anyone, but having an understanding of your body’s kinesthetics will improve your work.

Brian T. Delaney (Male Soul Survivor in Fallout 4) isn’t just one of the most physical voice actors I know, he is one of the most physical actors I know, full-stop. This does two things for him. First, it gives him technical control in the booth—he almost never goes off-mic, or hits the stand, or rustles his clothing (which is astonishing, given how much he moves around). Second, it invests all his game work with a sense of space and a sense of place—a layer and texture of reality that could not sound less like a guy reading a line—and his combat work in particular with a breathtaking degree of authenticity.

In short… learn how to move.

“BUT I’M ALREADY AWESOME,” you say.

Or, “I’ve already done a little voice work,” or some other excuse. Doesn’t matter. All the best working voice actors take classes constantly. They do not rest on their laurels. The best directors take classes too, including me. (He said with pompous implications.)

If you can’t afford classes, form a group of like-minded actors and practice together regularly. Watch videos on YouTube. Make your continuing education a priority.

The great thing is, these classes are FUN! You’ll meet like-minded artists! You’ll make great projects! You’ll feel impressive and confident as your abilities grow and grow!  Hell, you might get laid.

The point is that while the waiting and the day jobs are can be grueling, the work itself is fun. And if you don’t find it fun… do yourself a favor and pick a different career.

Kal 2017: Again, you’ll know. It’s okay to have a bad class/day/week/month. Stick to it! You can do it! Remain open and willing to grow, and you will likely succeed.

Part 2: This Is A Very Hard Job To Do

Voice over looks easy but it is VERY DIFFICULT—particularly in games. Take a moment and go on a journey of imagination with me:

Imagine four hours at a time in a booth that is as silent as The Surface of The Moon, unless the director has the talk-back open.

Imagine making seventy major emotional adjustments an hour. (By contrast, on-camera actors make between 2 and 10 per DAY.)

Imagine formulating a performance, delivering it, absorbing a note, reformulating, and redelivering in as little as 30 seconds.

Now imagine doing that 300-600 times in four hours.

This can be extremely tough. You must be able to clear as many as 150 lines an hour, with an average of 70. (Animation is closer to 20-30.) You must be a MUTHAFUCKIN’ BAWSE at cold-reading. (Better always to give a strong-but-wrong take right off the bat, than fiddle-fart around with broken half-takes.)

And line 600 has to be as strong and fresh as line 001.

Do not confuse fun and easy. This is a very fun job when it’s done right. It is ALWAYS very hard work. And if you’re not ready for hard work… do I have to say it again? You’re smart. I don’t. You get the idea.

Kal 2017: I really don’t. Even at its most difficult this is a pretty great job, one of the few remaining that is protected by a strong union. It is hard, but it is also a blast.

Part 3: A Great Voice Actor

I’ll keep this straightforward. A great voice actor is…

Punctual. Be on time. On time means 5-10 minutes early.

Friendly, but not unctuous. Don��t be a sourpuss, don’t climb in anyone’s lap.

Patient. Sometimes (rarely) writers and clients and producers will test your patience, or act outright rude. Try to be Zen. A good director will shield you from as much of this as possible.

CONFIDENT. I’m gonna repeat this—

CONFIDENT! Always give me a strong-but-wrong choice instead of a     hesitant garble. I cannot stress this enough. If you are second-guessing yourself, you are wasting everyone’s time undercutting your talent and hard work. Be kind to yourself by standing by your ability, and let the     director tell you if we need to adjust the performance.

A great listener. Redirect is gonna come at you thick and fast and you will have to pay close attention!

Dedicated. You may work on some dumb projects in your life. Doesn’t matter. You give every single stupid burger commercial your all. It is your job. Do not phone it in. Do not EVER EVER EVER show up drunk, high, or bored.

A strong reader. No two ways around this one. You have to pick stuff up off the page very rapidly. Kal 2017: Yes, okay, but also don’t be afraid to ask for the script in advance. Some won’t be willing to share it, but many simply assume you do not want it ahead of time. (Many voice actors don’t.) In that case they will be overjoyed to share it so you can rehearse. It never hurts to ask.

Not afraid to ask questions. If you don’t understand a line, or a piece of direction, just ASK ME ABOUT IT. Kal 2017: Please do this. Don’t be shy. We’re here to help YOU, so you can please THE CLIENT, which in turn makes US look good.

Excited to collaborate. You should bring ideas to the material. You should also be willing to totally chuck them and try something new in the spirit of exploration, even if you think it’s gonna be garbage.

Resilient. If you fuck up, just do another one. :) Kal 2017: This is related to confident. It’s okay to mess up. All the pros do. Don’t be embarrassed. Try not to get in your head. Just climb back on that horse.

Part 4: Upsides

There are a lot of upsides. As I said, it can be very fun work. More importantly, it can be very creatively satisfying.

It also pays well. Voice actors are one of the few lucky groups of American workers still protected by a strong union. Union minimums are in the ballpark of $800.00 for a four hour session. Voice actors work like Russian plow-horses, but thanks to SAG/AFTRA they are adequately recompensed for it.

Finally, voice acting is the one realm of acting where your age and your looks do not factor in too heavily. You can break into it fairly late in life, unlike on-camera acting where you essentially reach your expiration date at 30. Steve Blum, who is currently the toast of the VO town (you probably know him as Zeb Orelios in Star Wars Rebels or as Wolverine in just about everything) didn’t really get going in mainstream animation and games until middle age. He is not unique in that respect. It is never too late.

And, you can do it until you literally croak.

Part 5: Reel Etc.

So let’s say I haven’t scared you off. Let’s say you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no other job on earth that will satisfy you, and you are willing to walk barefoot across hot glass and mixed metaphors to be a voice actor.

What now?

Well, if you have been working very hard, and taking your classes and all that stuff I just spent an hour flapping my Tumblrgums about, then you might be ready to record a reel.

A reel is a short audio sample that showcases your best abilities and your best work.

Generally speaking most pro VO actors have:

An animation reel

A videogame reel

A commercial reel

Three separate reels with different material on them. If creature sounds are something they do, they might also also have a fourth creature noise reel.

A basic videogame reel should include:

The Leader—think Captain America, Superman, Princess Leia, Katniss Everdeen, and Jennifer Hale’s incomparable Fem Shep

The Rogue—think Han Solo, Black Widow, Tony Stark, Catwoman, and Marion Ravonwood

The Pale Rider—think Clint Eastwood, Batman, Ellen Ripley, Sarah Conner, Trinity

The weak protagonist — this is, like, an affable scientist with no combat skills — someone who could be endangered.

Strong crazy — this can range from a sinister psycho like The Joker, to a likeable loon like Crazy-Eyes — the key is unhinged/unpredictable.

Weak crazy — the person who saw their whole crew torn apart by demons and is a basket case — edge of sanity.

Strong antagonist sinister, rational — like Voldemort.

Strong antagonist tough, rational — more of a bully in a barfight, a “the fuck you lookin’ at?” kind.

Antagonist crazy/desperate — there’s some overlap here with the weak protag so be sure to differentiate them, or just do one or the other.

Add to this any accents you do REALLY well. Like, indistinguishable from the real thing. Not a Groundskeeper Willy Scottish accent — that belongs on an animation reel — just absolute realism. If you can’t nail these then leave ‘em out!

An animation reel is more of a laundry list of different character voices and characters you can do. The key is total consistency. Don’t add a voice or speech impediment or texture you can’t maintain for four hours at a time.

Commercial reels can play to your strengths type-wise but there’s a few standbys you hear all the time:

If you’re a dude, commercial requires (amongst other clichés)

smooth ad dude (introducing the all new Lexus Privilege RX with comfort ride technology)

excited ad dude (a triple-pounder, large fry and fountain drink for just 3.99? I’m lovin’ it!)

and befuddled husband/boyfriend/father (Honey? What’s this 'Greek yog hurt’? What happened to the double-choco chip?)

If you’re a dudette, you want

smooth ad dudette (again the Lexus)

sexy hamburger subtext (With large fries and gooey, melty cheese. She’s a little too into that sandwich, Man.)

and Motrin Momwife (So you can be the “on the PTA, on the town, side-planking, keeping up with your girlfriends gal” you want to be!)

Kal 2017: There is a recent trend in VO for commercials that I would be remiss if I did not mention. This is the “read that is so laid back and casual it is almost nonexistent.” Millenials know when they’re being solicited, so the ad industry has adopted a—in my opinion comically— disinterested tone. I call it “maybe you’d like a hamburger or whatever, I don’t care”. Here is the most extreme example I am aware of:

Facebook Live "Hidden Talent" from Buck on Vimeo.

It is bizarre from a traditional perspective, and it will go against the grain for anyone who grew up with this:

Nevertheless, it is here, and you should make sure you have it on your reel.

In all your reels:

NO MORE THAN A SENTENCE OR TWO FROM EACH VOICE. Target length of a whole reel should be around 90 SECONDS TOTAL. If they want more than that, they will ask you to record AN AUDITION, which is what you’re hoping they’ll do anyway. Do not go over in length. You will irritate casting directors who have 500 of these to go through. Kal 2017:     TRY not to go over in length, by more than one voice.😁

ONLY YOUR VERY BEST STUFF. When in doubt, leave it out. There are some actors in this business who can do a million voices, there are some who do JUST ONE THING THE BEST. Both kinds work. Better to kill it with three voices than to give them a reason NOT to hire you.

A GOOD MIX ON A GOOD MIC. You will probably have to go to a studio to record your reel. If you do, I recommend getting a voice director to work with you while you’re at it. This will cost money, but it is an investment. If you are the rare and enterprising voice actor who has a ton of equipment and is a sound engineer too, you might be able to do it yourself. Do not go too cheap on this, though. You don’t want great performance undercut by a bad mix.

One final thought:

MOVE TO LOS ANGELES. There is only one place to be if you are a serious professional in this business, and that is L.A. It is the biggest market, and the center of the industry. You might land a couple of radio spots living in East Anywhere, but you are not going to break into the industry proper.

That does not mean that you can’t TRAIN in other, cheaper places. But when you are ready to work, you come to L.A.

No, Austin and San Francisco aren’t just as good. No, your stage work in New York doesn’t count for anything out here. I wish it did, but it doesn’t.

The five year break-in period doesn’t begin until you live here. Sorry folks!

Part 6: Wrap-up

I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few things here, and I’ll try to fill in the gaps as they occur to me. Please feel free to tweet at me with any questions: @kalelbogdanove

In summary: if you LOVE voice acting, and you can’t imagine doing anything else on Earth, and you are willing to work your butt off to improve, AND you are willing to keep at it for YEARS… then go for it! I’ll see you in the booth.

Kal 2017: Or if you love it and you are willing to give it a whirl and follow your dreams. Always, always follow your dreams. (Just work hard at them, too.)

-Kal-El

P.S. — for a smart (and much shorter) perspective on this subject from an actual actor, you might try reading this Facebook post by industry luminary Tara Strong:

https://www.facebook.com/tara.strong.514/posts/10155956807350494

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Gun Control Act Of 1968

This Legislation regulated interstate and foreign commerce in firearms, including importation, “prohibited persons”, and licensing provisions. After the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Gun Control Act is passed and imposes stricter licensing and regulation on the firearms industry, establishes new categories of firearms offenses, and prohibits the sale of firearms and ammunition to felons and certain other prohibited persons. It also imposes the first Federal jurisdiction over “destructive devices,” including bombs, mines, grenades and other similar devices. Congress reorganizes ATU into the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD) and delegates to them the enforcement of the Gun Control Act. “Forget the democratic processes, the judicial system and the talent for organization that have long been the distinctive marks of the U.S. Forget, too, the affluence (vast, if still not general enough) and the fundamental respect for law by most Americans. From the nation’s beginnings, in fact and fiction, the gun has been provider and protector.” Though the 1968 law was a victory of sorts for gun-control activists, many were disappointed it didn’t include a registry of firearms or federal licensing requirements for gun owners. TIME reported, “It may take another act of horror to push really effective gun curbs through Congress.” Those dynamics the disappointment of gun-control activists, particularly after moments of tragedy, running up against the very real place of guns in American society may sound familiar.

What are the most important things the law changed?

It banned interstate shipments of firearms and ammunition to private individuals [and] sales of guns to minors, drug addicts and “mental incompetents.” This is the first time you have in law that mentally unbalanced people ought not to be able to get gun also convicted felons. It also strengthened the licensing and record-keeping requirements for gun dealers, and that was significant because gun dealers were subject to virtually no systematic scrutiny up until this time, although a 1938 federal law did establish a fee they paid to government to be a licensed dealer. It banned importation of foreign-made surplus firearms, except those The President of the NRA, who had testified before Congress about the bill had said [paraphrasing], ‘We’re not thrilled with this, but we can live with it. I think it’s reasonable.’ The fact that he would concede there’s any such thing as a reasonable gun control legislation that represented the prevailing point of view of NRA leadership at the time, from 1968 to the late 1970s. Portions of the ’68 law were modified by a law passed by Congress in 1986, the Firearms Owners Protections Act, which sought to repeal even more of the law. It didn’t succeed, but the 1986 law does repeal or modify or blunt some of the aspects of the ’68 law. [It does that] by amending the ’68 law to allow for the interstate sale of rifles and shotguns as long as it was legal in the states of the buyer and seller, eliminating certain record-keeping requirements for ammunition dealers, and making it easier for individuals selling guns to do so without a license. The 1986 federal law was the culmination of the effort to try to roll back the 1968 law. The gun issue hadn’t been politicized in the ’60s the way it has been in the last few decades, where it has become even more angry and strident; 1968 was a year of political assassinations that shocked the nation. One of the great myths is the idea that gun-control laws are an artefact of the modern era, the 20th century. Gun laws are as old as America, literally to the very early colonial beginnings of the nation. From the beginning of the late 1600s to the end of the 1800s, gun laws were everywhere, thousands of gun laws of every imaginable variety. You find virtually every state in the union enacting laws that bar people from carrying concealed weapons. That’s something people don’t realize. The GCA is the main federal law that governs the interstate commerce of firearms in the United States. Specifically, the GCA prohibits firearms commerce across state lines except between licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. Under the GCA, any individual or company that wants to partake in commercial activity dealing with the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms must possess a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Procedural jargon notwithstanding, the enactment of 1968 GCA was a watershed moment in US politics. It was the first piece of legislation that put the gun control debate on the map.

Political Context of the GCA

It should be noted that the GCA was not the first piece of gun control passed at the federal level. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act of 1934 into law. The first comprehensive gun law at the federal level, the NFA taxed and mandated registration of certain firearms such as machine guns, sawed-off rifles, and sawed-off shotguns. This law was passed under the pretext of addressing mob-style violence during Prohibition, but a careful review of the New Deal era shows how the NFA was just another piece of FDR’s unprecedented social engineering program. This NFA was followed up by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which created a precursor to the 1968 GCA’s FFL system. Despite the government’s encroachments on gun rights, the federal government stayed away from further regulation for the next three decades. The passage of the GCA wasn’t without its fair share of opposition. Groups like the National Rifle Association, which traditionally focused on conservation and outdoor niches, were compelled to take nominally pro-gun stances. However, the NRA wasn’t alone. Groups like Gun Owners of America came into the spotlight, positioning themselves as a “no compromise” alternative to NRA. By the early 1980s, pro-gun lobbies would become pivotal actors in the never-ending circus of DC politics.

deas are Still Key

As the days go by, gun rights appear to be gradually falling down the path of statist micromanagement. But there’s something more fundamental to this trend than the cliché aphorism of eternal vigilance and conventional strategies of political activism. It really comes down to the battle of ideas. The GCA is a child of the New Deal and Great Society mindset that views the government as an omnipotent administrator of human affairs. A paradigm shift in ideas is needed to break free from this top-down vision of society. Until then, gun lobbies face an uphill battle. A solid first step is for gun owners to recognize that infringements like the GCA of 1968 must never be tolerated by anyone who believes in the right to self-defense. After three decades of quiescence in the arena of gun control politics, the turmoil of the 1960s unleashed a wave of demand for new gun control legislation. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, prompted the country to focus on the regulation of firearms. Then the urban riots beginning in 1964 and the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy fueled an inferno of outrage that demanded congressional action. In the wake of these acts of violence the U.S. Congress enacted the Gun Control Act which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1968. Although the Gun Control Act did not contain the owner licensing and gun registration provisions that President Johnson desired, the act, along with the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act passed by Congress months earlier, contained the most significant restrictions on firearms since Congress enacted the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION IN THE 1960s

A highly controversial bill that precipitated emotional debate and ferocious political battles, the Gun Control Act travelled quite a convoluted path prior to its ultimate approval by Congress. It started down its torturous road in 1963 when Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, championed legislation geared specifically at tightening restrictions on the sale of mail-order handguns. After President Kennedy was murdered with a military-style rifle obtained through the mail, Senator Dodd extended the reach of the legislation to include “long guns,” including rifles and shotguns. The legislation met an early demise when it was held up in the Commerce Committee and not allowed out for a vote on the Senate floor. Interestingly, the National Rifle Association (NRA) leaders initially supported the measures and even engaged in drafting Dodd’s bill. Yet the NRA leadership did not wish to alienate its more radical rank and file, so they neglected to divulge this to their members. Instead, in a letter to each of its affiliates, the NRA claimed its executive vice-president testified against the bill and prevented it from being voted out of Committee.

The NRA publication The Rifleman criticized the bill as a product of “irrational emotionalism,” and the first four issues of The Rifleman in 1964 dedicated more than thirty columns to firearms legislation, never telling its members of the NRA leadership’s support of the bill. These publications provoked the grass roots members to send off a great number of angry letters opposing the bill to Congress. In 1965 President Johnson aggressively endorsed the cause of fighting crime and regulating firearms by spearheading a new, strict gun control measure that Dodd introduced in the Senate. But the Johnson administration’s proposal suffered a string of defeats over the next three years because of heavy pressure from the NRA, key congressional leaders who supported them, the American Legion, and gun importers, manufacturers, and dealers. Adding to the administration’s difficulties was the lack of an organized pro–gun control lobby to check the relentless onslaughts against the legislation by the NRA. In 1968 President Johnson and his administration intensified their efforts. Johnson began using the bully pulpit of the presidency to chide Congress publicly to enact his gun control policy. In his 1968 State of the Union address, Johnson exhorted Congress to pass a gun control law that would stop “mail order murder.” And months later, President Johnson conveyed to Congress, in no uncertain terms, his desire for crime legislation that required national registration of every gun in America and licenses for all gun owners. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate responded to the president’s admonishment in short order. Congressional representatives carefully, and often vociferously, argued about the provisions of the president’s crime legislation. The measure, titled the Safe Streets and Crime Control Bill, received stiff resistance from gun control opponents.

NRA OPPOSITION TO THE ACT

By 1968 the leadership of the NRA was fully against any and all gun regulations. The group undertook a mass-mailing lobbying effort to undermine the legislation. Their organized lobbying efforts proved successful in wiping out much of the support for gun licensing and registration restrictions. Congress eventually enacted the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, a watered-down version of the Johnson administration’s anticrime and gun control proposal. The act prohibited the interstate shipment of pistols and revolvers to individuals, but it specifically exempted rifles and shotguns from any regulations. With the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the groundswell of support for tough gun control laws reached unprecedented levels. On June 6, the day after the Kennedy assassination, Johnson signed the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, but lamented the law’s weak provisions. President Johnson, who had proposed gun control measures every year since becoming president, appeared on national television imploring Congress to pass a new and tougher gun control law that banned mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition. Reading a letter he sent to Congress, Johnson pleaded to Congress “in the name of sanity… in the name of safety and in the name of an aroused nation to give America the gun-control law it needs.” On June 24, President Johnson again addressed the country, calling for mandatory national gun registration and licenses for every gun owner. Around this time, polls showed that approximately 80 percent of Americans favoured gun registration laws. The public flooded members of Congress with letters demanding greater regulation of guns. Protestors picketed the Washington headquarters of the NRA. Even many members of Congress who had been staunch adversaries of strict firearms regulation crossed over to the other side and rallied in favour of a tough gun control bill.

ORGANIZED GUN CONTROL EFFORTS

Pro–gun control advocates mobilized and constructed an effective pro–gun control pressure group called the Emergency Committee for Gun Control. The bipartisan organization was headed by Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., a former astronaut and friend of Senator Robert Kennedy. The Committee, comprising volunteer staffers who had worked for Senator Kennedy before he was assassinated, received extensive support from a variety of organizations such as the American Bankers Association, the AFL-CIO, the Conference of Mayors, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Attorneys General, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Riding a wave of support, the Committee sought to counteract the highly organized and resource-laden NRA. Their efforts proved somewhat effective, but ultimately fell short of the group’s goal of a comprehensive scheme of gun registration and gun owner licensing. Facing this unprecedented, widespread push for gun control, the NRA became highly energized and rallied against the president’s proposed regulations. National Rifle Association executive vice-president Franklin L. Orth argued publicly that no law, existing or proposed, could have prevented the murder of Senator Kennedy. On June 15, 1968, the NRA mailed a letter to its members calling for them to write their members of Congress to oppose any new firearms laws. Using hyperbole and emotionally charged rhetoric, NRA President Harold W. Glassen wrote that the right of sportsmen to obtain, own, and use firearms for a legal purpose was in grave jeopardy. Furthermore, Glassen wrote, the clear goal of gun control proponents was complete abolition of civilian ownership of guns. Senator Joseph D. Tydings, Democrat of Maryland, who had introduced the provisions requiring licensing of gun owners and registration of firearms, responded to this accusation in a press conference calling the letter “calculated hysteria” and saying no bill would prevent law-abiding citizens from having guns. Nevertheless, Glassen’s tactic effectively energized the membership of the NRA, then 900,000 strong, just as the public outcry calling for more firearms regulations was dissipating. Whereas Congress had encountered overwhelming support for more gun control measures in the week after Senator Kennedy’s death, by late June and early July they reported the majority of the letters from constituents indicated opposition to any new gun control provisions. The battle over the president’s proposals continued in the halls of Congress in typical fashion, featuring emotionally charged debates and supporters split along specific demographic and ideological lines. In the House, opponents argued against a registration provision claiming it would be costly and ineffective in preventing crime. In the Senate, Dodd attacked the NRA, decrying its tactics of “blackmail, intimidation and unscrupulous propaganda.” The licensing and registration provisions, backed solidly by northern liberals, were easily defeated in both the House of Representatives and Senate by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. However, the provisions banning mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition fared better, passing both the House and Senate. Eastern and Midwestern members of Congress overwhelmingly supported these measures, while those from the South and West were much less supportive. Members of Congress representing urban areas staunchly supported the bill, whereas those from rural sections of the country voted against it in significant numbers.

PROVISIONS OF THE GUN CONTROL ACT

On October 22, President Johnson signed into law the Gun Control Act of 1968—an instrument which, just months earlier, was considered a lost cause because of staunch opposition. The signing of the legislation represented a significant political win for the president, Senator Dodd, and other gun control advocates who had struggled for years to pass a gun control bill that would effect real change. Enacted pursuant to the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, the legislation had three major features. First, it prohibited interstate traffic in firearms and ammunition. Second, it denied guns to specific classes of individuals such as felons, minors, fugitives, drug addicts, and the mentally ill. Third, it prohibited the importation of surplus military weapons into the United States as well as guns and ammunition not federally certified as sporting weapons or souvenirs. As is usually the case in American politics, the statute did not signify a complete victory for either side. Advocates of gun control failed to get provisions requiring owner licensing and firearms registration, yet gun control opponents, typically NRA members, suffered another setback to their goal of removing governmental regulation of firearms. This partial defeat for the NRA served as the group’s wake-up call, energizing and expanding the membership of the NRA who suddenly felt politically vulnerable. Yet unlike the NRA, the pro–gun control advocates were not organized for long-term pressure politics, and their political influence began to wane. Thus in 1986 the NRA successfully weakened the provisions of the 1968 act by spearheading the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act.

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Source: https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/gun-control-act-of-1968/

[mayarosa47]

Gun Control Act Of 1968

This Legislation regulated interstate and foreign commerce in firearms, including importation, “prohibited persons”, and licensing provisions. After the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Gun Control Act is passed and imposes stricter licensing and regulation on the firearms industry, establishes new categories of firearms offenses, and prohibits the sale of firearms and ammunition to felons and certain other prohibited persons. It also imposes the first Federal jurisdiction over “destructive devices,” including bombs, mines, grenades and other similar devices. Congress reorganizes ATU into the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD) and delegates to them the enforcement of the Gun Control Act. “Forget the democratic processes, the judicial system and the talent for organization that have long been the distinctive marks of the U.S. Forget, too, the affluence (vast, if still not general enough) and the fundamental respect for law by most Americans. From the nation’s beginnings, in fact and fiction, the gun has been provider and protector.” Though the 1968 law was a victory of sorts for gun-control activists, many were disappointed it didn’t include a registry of firearms or federal licensing requirements for gun owners. TIME reported, “It may take another act of horror to push really effective gun curbs through Congress.” Those dynamics the disappointment of gun-control activists, particularly after moments of tragedy, running up against the very real place of guns in American society may sound familiar.

What are the most important things the law changed?

It banned interstate shipments of firearms and ammunition to private individuals [and] sales of guns to minors, drug addicts and “mental incompetents.” This is the first time you have in law that mentally unbalanced people ought not to be able to get gun also convicted felons. It also strengthened the licensing and record-keeping requirements for gun dealers, and that was significant because gun dealers were subject to virtually no systematic scrutiny up until this time, although a 1938 federal law did establish a fee they paid to government to be a licensed dealer. It banned importation of foreign-made surplus firearms, except those The President of the NRA, who had testified before Congress about the bill had said [paraphrasing], ‘We’re not thrilled with this, but we can live with it. I think it’s reasonable.’ The fact that he would concede there’s any such thing as a reasonable gun control legislation that represented the prevailing point of view of NRA leadership at the time, from 1968 to the late 1970s. Portions of the ’68 law were modified by a law passed by Congress in 1986, the Firearms Owners Protections Act, which sought to repeal even more of the law. It didn’t succeed, but the 1986 law does repeal or modify or blunt some of the aspects of the ’68 law. [It does that] by amending the ’68 law to allow for the interstate sale of rifles and shotguns as long as it was legal in the states of the buyer and seller, eliminating certain record-keeping requirements for ammunition dealers, and making it easier for individuals selling guns to do so without a license. The 1986 federal law was the culmination of the effort to try to roll back the 1968 law. The gun issue hadn’t been politicized in the ’60s the way it has been in the last few decades, where it has become even more angry and strident; 1968 was a year of political assassinations that shocked the nation. One of the great myths is the idea that gun-control laws are an artefact of the modern era, the 20th century. Gun laws are as old as America, literally to the very early colonial beginnings of the nation. From the beginning of the late 1600s to the end of the 1800s, gun laws were everywhere, thousands of gun laws of every imaginable variety. You find virtually every state in the union enacting laws that bar people from carrying concealed weapons. That’s something people don’t realize. The GCA is the main federal law that governs the interstate commerce of firearms in the United States. Specifically, the GCA prohibits firearms commerce across state lines except between licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. Under the GCA, any individual or company that wants to partake in commercial activity dealing with the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms must possess a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Procedural jargon notwithstanding, the enactment of 1968 GCA was a watershed moment in US politics. It was the first piece of legislation that put the gun control debate on the map.

Political Context of the GCA

It should be noted that the GCA was not the first piece of gun control passed at the federal level. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act of 1934 into law. The first comprehensive gun law at the federal level, the NFA taxed and mandated registration of certain firearms such as machine guns, sawed-off rifles, and sawed-off shotguns. This law was passed under the pretext of addressing mob-style violence during Prohibition, but a careful review of the New Deal era shows how the NFA was just another piece of FDR’s unprecedented social engineering program. This NFA was followed up by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which created a precursor to the 1968 GCA’s FFL system. Despite the government’s encroachments on gun rights, the federal government stayed away from further regulation for the next three decades. The passage of the GCA wasn’t without its fair share of opposition. Groups like the National Rifle Association, which traditionally focused on conservation and outdoor niches, were compelled to take nominally pro-gun stances. However, the NRA wasn’t alone. Groups like Gun Owners of America came into the spotlight, positioning themselves as a “no compromise” alternative to NRA. By the early 1980s, pro-gun lobbies would become pivotal actors in the never-ending circus of DC politics.

deas are Still Key

As the days go by, gun rights appear to be gradually falling down the path of statist micromanagement. But there’s something more fundamental to this trend than the cliché aphorism of eternal vigilance and conventional strategies of political activism. It really comes down to the battle of ideas. The GCA is a child of the New Deal and Great Society mindset that views the government as an omnipotent administrator of human affairs. A paradigm shift in ideas is needed to break free from this top-down vision of society. Until then, gun lobbies face an uphill battle. A solid first step is for gun owners to recognize that infringements like the GCA of 1968 must never be tolerated by anyone who believes in the right to self-defense. After three decades of quiescence in the arena of gun control politics, the turmoil of the 1960s unleashed a wave of demand for new gun control legislation. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, prompted the country to focus on the regulation of firearms. Then the urban riots beginning in 1964 and the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy fueled an inferno of outrage that demanded congressional action. In the wake of these acts of violence the U.S. Congress enacted the Gun Control Act which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1968. Although the Gun Control Act did not contain the owner licensing and gun registration provisions that President Johnson desired, the act, along with the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act passed by Congress months earlier, contained the most significant restrictions on firearms since Congress enacted the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION IN THE 1960s

A highly controversial bill that precipitated emotional debate and ferocious political battles, the Gun Control Act travelled quite a convoluted path prior to its ultimate approval by Congress. It started down its torturous road in 1963 when Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, championed legislation geared specifically at tightening restrictions on the sale of mail-order handguns. After President Kennedy was murdered with a military-style rifle obtained through the mail, Senator Dodd extended the reach of the legislation to include “long guns,” including rifles and shotguns. The legislation met an early demise when it was held up in the Commerce Committee and not allowed out for a vote on the Senate floor. Interestingly, the National Rifle Association (NRA) leaders initially supported the measures and even engaged in drafting Dodd’s bill. Yet the NRA leadership did not wish to alienate its more radical rank and file, so they neglected to divulge this to their members. Instead, in a letter to each of its affiliates, the NRA claimed its executive vice-president testified against the bill and prevented it from being voted out of Committee.

The NRA publication The Rifleman criticized the bill as a product of “irrational emotionalism,” and the first four issues of The Rifleman in 1964 dedicated more than thirty columns to firearms legislation, never telling its members of the NRA leadership’s support of the bill. These publications provoked the grass roots members to send off a great number of angry letters opposing the bill to Congress. In 1965 President Johnson aggressively endorsed the cause of fighting crime and regulating firearms by spearheading a new, strict gun control measure that Dodd introduced in the Senate. But the Johnson administration’s proposal suffered a string of defeats over the next three years because of heavy pressure from the NRA, key congressional leaders who supported them, the American Legion, and gun importers, manufacturers, and dealers. Adding to the administration’s difficulties was the lack of an organized pro–gun control lobby to check the relentless onslaughts against the legislation by the NRA. In 1968 President Johnson and his administration intensified their efforts. Johnson began using the bully pulpit of the presidency to chide Congress publicly to enact his gun control policy. In his 1968 State of the Union address, Johnson exhorted Congress to pass a gun control law that would stop “mail order murder.” And months later, President Johnson conveyed to Congress, in no uncertain terms, his desire for crime legislation that required national registration of every gun in America and licenses for all gun owners. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate responded to the president’s admonishment in short order. Congressional representatives carefully, and often vociferously, argued about the provisions of the president’s crime legislation. The measure, titled the Safe Streets and Crime Control Bill, received stiff resistance from gun control opponents.

NRA OPPOSITION TO THE ACT

By 1968 the leadership of the NRA was fully against any and all gun regulations. The group undertook a mass-mailing lobbying effort to undermine the legislation. Their organized lobbying efforts proved successful in wiping out much of the support for gun licensing and registration restrictions. Congress eventually enacted the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, a watered-down version of the Johnson administration’s anticrime and gun control proposal. The act prohibited the interstate shipment of pistols and revolvers to individuals, but it specifically exempted rifles and shotguns from any regulations. With the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the groundswell of support for tough gun control laws reached unprecedented levels. On June 6, the day after the Kennedy assassination, Johnson signed the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, but lamented the law’s weak provisions. President Johnson, who had proposed gun control measures every year since becoming president, appeared on national television imploring Congress to pass a new and tougher gun control law that banned mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition. Reading a letter he sent to Congress, Johnson pleaded to Congress “in the name of sanity… in the name of safety and in the name of an aroused nation to give America the gun-control law it needs.” On June 24, President Johnson again addressed the country, calling for mandatory national gun registration and licenses for every gun owner. Around this time, polls showed that approximately 80 percent of Americans favoured gun registration laws. The public flooded members of Congress with letters demanding greater regulation of guns. Protestors picketed the Washington headquarters of the NRA. Even many members of Congress who had been staunch adversaries of strict firearms regulation crossed over to the other side and rallied in favour of a tough gun control bill.

ORGANIZED GUN CONTROL EFFORTS

Pro–gun control advocates mobilized and constructed an effective pro–gun control pressure group called the Emergency Committee for Gun Control. The bipartisan organization was headed by Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., a former astronaut and friend of Senator Robert Kennedy. The Committee, comprising volunteer staffers who had worked for Senator Kennedy before he was assassinated, received extensive support from a variety of organizations such as the American Bankers Association, the AFL-CIO, the Conference of Mayors, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Attorneys General, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Riding a wave of support, the Committee sought to counteract the highly organized and resource-laden NRA. Their efforts proved somewhat effective, but ultimately fell short of the group’s goal of a comprehensive scheme of gun registration and gun owner licensing. Facing this unprecedented, widespread push for gun control, the NRA became highly energized and rallied against the president’s proposed regulations. National Rifle Association executive vice-president Franklin L. Orth argued publicly that no law, existing or proposed, could have prevented the murder of Senator Kennedy. On June 15, 1968, the NRA mailed a letter to its members calling for them to write their members of Congress to oppose any new firearms laws. Using hyperbole and emotionally charged rhetoric, NRA President Harold W. Glassen wrote that the right of sportsmen to obtain, own, and use firearms for a legal purpose was in grave jeopardy. Furthermore, Glassen wrote, the clear goal of gun control proponents was complete abolition of civilian ownership of guns. Senator Joseph D. Tydings, Democrat of Maryland, who had introduced the provisions requiring licensing of gun owners and registration of firearms, responded to this accusation in a press conference calling the letter “calculated hysteria” and saying no bill would prevent law-abiding citizens from having guns. Nevertheless, Glassen’s tactic effectively energized the membership of the NRA, then 900,000 strong, just as the public outcry calling for more firearms regulations was dissipating. Whereas Congress had encountered overwhelming support for more gun control measures in the week after Senator Kennedy’s death, by late June and early July they reported the majority of the letters from constituents indicated opposition to any new gun control provisions. The battle over the president’s proposals continued in the halls of Congress in typical fashion, featuring emotionally charged debates and supporters split along specific demographic and ideological lines. In the House, opponents argued against a registration provision claiming it would be costly and ineffective in preventing crime. In the Senate, Dodd attacked the NRA, decrying its tactics of “blackmail, intimidation and unscrupulous propaganda.” The licensing and registration provisions, backed solidly by northern liberals, were easily defeated in both the House of Representatives and Senate by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. However, the provisions banning mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition fared better, passing both the House and Senate. Eastern and Midwestern members of Congress overwhelmingly supported these measures, while those from the South and West were much less supportive. Members of Congress representing urban areas staunchly supported the bill, whereas those from rural sections of the country voted against it in significant numbers.

PROVISIONS OF THE GUN CONTROL ACT

On October 22, President Johnson signed into law the Gun Control Act of 1968—an instrument which, just months earlier, was considered a lost cause because of staunch opposition. The signing of the legislation represented a significant political win for the president, Senator Dodd, and other gun control advocates who had struggled for years to pass a gun control bill that would effect real change. Enacted pursuant to the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, the legislation had three major features. First, it prohibited interstate traffic in firearms and ammunition. Second, it denied guns to specific classes of individuals such as felons, minors, fugitives, drug addicts, and the mentally ill. Third, it prohibited the importation of surplus military weapons into the United States as well as guns and ammunition not federally certified as sporting weapons or souvenirs. As is usually the case in American politics, the statute did not signify a complete victory for either side. Advocates of gun control failed to get provisions requiring owner licensing and firearms registration, yet gun control opponents, typically NRA members, suffered another setback to their goal of removing governmental regulation of firearms. This partial defeat for the NRA served as the group’s wake-up call, energizing and expanding the membership of the NRA who suddenly felt politically vulnerable. Yet unlike the NRA, the pro–gun control advocates were not organized for long-term pressure politics, and their political influence began to wane. Thus in 1986 the NRA successfully weakened the provisions of the 1968 act by spearheading the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act.

Utah Gun Lawyer Free Consultation

When you need legal help from a Gun Attorney in Utah, please call Ascent Law LLC for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

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from https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/gun-control-act-of-1968/

from Criminal Defense Lawyer West Jordan Utah - Blog http://criminaldefenselawyerwestjordanutah.weebly.com/blog/gun-control-act-of-1968

[aretia]

Gun Control Act Of 1968

This Legislation regulated interstate and foreign commerce in firearms, including importation, “prohibited persons”, and licensing provisions. After the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Gun Control Act is passed and imposes stricter licensing and regulation on the firearms industry, establishes new categories of firearms offenses, and prohibits the sale of firearms and ammunition to felons and certain other prohibited persons. It also imposes the first Federal jurisdiction over “destructive devices,” including bombs, mines, grenades and other similar devices. Congress reorganizes ATU into the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD) and delegates to them the enforcement of the Gun Control Act. “Forget the democratic processes, the judicial system and the talent for organization that have long been the distinctive marks of the U.S. Forget, too, the affluence (vast, if still not general enough) and the fundamental respect for law by most Americans. From the nation’s beginnings, in fact and fiction, the gun has been provider and protector.” Though the 1968 law was a victory of sorts for gun-control activists, many were disappointed it didn’t include a registry of firearms or federal licensing requirements for gun owners. TIME reported, “It may take another act of horror to push really effective gun curbs through Congress.” Those dynamics the disappointment of gun-control activists, particularly after moments of tragedy, running up against the very real place of guns in American society may sound familiar.

What are the most important things the law changed?

It banned interstate shipments of firearms and ammunition to private individuals [and] sales of guns to minors, drug addicts and “mental incompetents.” This is the first time you have in law that mentally unbalanced people ought not to be able to get gun also convicted felons. It also strengthened the licensing and record-keeping requirements for gun dealers, and that was significant because gun dealers were subject to virtually no systematic scrutiny up until this time, although a 1938 federal law did establish a fee they paid to government to be a licensed dealer. It banned importation of foreign-made surplus firearms, except those The President of the NRA, who had testified before Congress about the bill had said [paraphrasing], ‘We’re not thrilled with this, but we can live with it. I think it’s reasonable.’ The fact that he would concede there’s any such thing as a reasonable gun control legislation that represented the prevailing point of view of NRA leadership at the time, from 1968 to the late 1970s. Portions of the ’68 law were modified by a law passed by Congress in 1986, the Firearms Owners Protections Act, which sought to repeal even more of the law. It didn’t succeed, but the 1986 law does repeal or modify or blunt some of the aspects of the ’68 law. [It does that] by amending the ’68 law to allow for the interstate sale of rifles and shotguns as long as it was legal in the states of the buyer and seller, eliminating certain record-keeping requirements for ammunition dealers, and making it easier for individuals selling guns to do so without a license. The 1986 federal law was the culmination of the effort to try to roll back the 1968 law. The gun issue hadn’t been politicized in the ’60s the way it has been in the last few decades, where it has become even more angry and strident; 1968 was a year of political assassinations that shocked the nation. One of the great myths is the idea that gun-control laws are an artefact of the modern era, the 20th century. Gun laws are as old as America, literally to the very early colonial beginnings of the nation. From the beginning of the late 1600s to the end of the 1800s, gun laws were everywhere, thousands of gun laws of every imaginable variety. You find virtually every state in the union enacting laws that bar people from carrying concealed weapons. That’s something people don’t realize. The GCA is the main federal law that governs the interstate commerce of firearms in the United States. Specifically, the GCA prohibits firearms commerce across state lines except between licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. Under the GCA, any individual or company that wants to partake in commercial activity dealing with the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms must possess a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Procedural jargon notwithstanding, the enactment of 1968 GCA was a watershed moment in US politics. It was the first piece of legislation that put the gun control debate on the map.

Political Context of the GCA

It should be noted that the GCA was not the first piece of gun control passed at the federal level. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act of 1934 into law. The first comprehensive gun law at the federal level, the NFA taxed and mandated registration of certain firearms such as machine guns, sawed-off rifles, and sawed-off shotguns. This law was passed under the pretext of addressing mob-style violence during Prohibition, but a careful review of the New Deal era shows how the NFA was just another piece of FDR’s unprecedented social engineering program. This NFA was followed up by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which created a precursor to the 1968 GCA’s FFL system. Despite the government’s encroachments on gun rights, the federal government stayed away from further regulation for the next three decades. The passage of the GCA wasn’t without its fair share of opposition. Groups like the National Rifle Association, which traditionally focused on conservation and outdoor niches, were compelled to take nominally pro-gun stances. However, the NRA wasn’t alone. Groups like Gun Owners of America came into the spotlight, positioning themselves as a “no compromise” alternative to NRA. By the early 1980s, pro-gun lobbies would become pivotal actors in the never-ending circus of DC politics.

deas are Still Key

As the days go by, gun rights appear to be gradually falling down the path of statist micromanagement. But there’s something more fundamental to this trend than the cliché aphorism of eternal vigilance and conventional strategies of political activism. It really comes down to the battle of ideas. The GCA is a child of the New Deal and Great Society mindset that views the government as an omnipotent administrator of human affairs. A paradigm shift in ideas is needed to break free from this top-down vision of society. Until then, gun lobbies face an uphill battle. A solid first step is for gun owners to recognize that infringements like the GCA of 1968 must never be tolerated by anyone who believes in the right to self-defense. After three decades of quiescence in the arena of gun control politics, the turmoil of the 1960s unleashed a wave of demand for new gun control legislation. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, prompted the country to focus on the regulation of firearms. Then the urban riots beginning in 1964 and the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy fueled an inferno of outrage that demanded congressional action. In the wake of these acts of violence the U.S. Congress enacted the Gun Control Act which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1968. Although the Gun Control Act did not contain the owner licensing and gun registration provisions that President Johnson desired, the act, along with the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act passed by Congress months earlier, contained the most significant restrictions on firearms since Congress enacted the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION IN THE 1960s

A highly controversial bill that precipitated emotional debate and ferocious political battles, the Gun Control Act travelled quite a convoluted path prior to its ultimate approval by Congress. It started down its torturous road in 1963 when Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, championed legislation geared specifically at tightening restrictions on the sale of mail-order handguns. After President Kennedy was murdered with a military-style rifle obtained through the mail, Senator Dodd extended the reach of the legislation to include “long guns,” including rifles and shotguns. The legislation met an early demise when it was held up in the Commerce Committee and not allowed out for a vote on the Senate floor. Interestingly, the National Rifle Association (NRA) leaders initially supported the measures and even engaged in drafting Dodd’s bill. Yet the NRA leadership did not wish to alienate its more radical rank and file, so they neglected to divulge this to their members. Instead, in a letter to each of its affiliates, the NRA claimed its executive vice-president testified against the bill and prevented it from being voted out of Committee.

The NRA publication The Rifleman criticized the bill as a product of “irrational emotionalism,” and the first four issues of The Rifleman in 1964 dedicated more than thirty columns to firearms legislation, never telling its members of the NRA leadership’s support of the bill. These publications provoked the grass roots members to send off a great number of angry letters opposing the bill to Congress. In 1965 President Johnson aggressively endorsed the cause of fighting crime and regulating firearms by spearheading a new, strict gun control measure that Dodd introduced in the Senate. But the Johnson administration’s proposal suffered a string of defeats over the next three years because of heavy pressure from the NRA, key congressional leaders who supported them, the American Legion, and gun importers, manufacturers, and dealers. Adding to the administration’s difficulties was the lack of an organized pro–gun control lobby to check the relentless onslaughts against the legislation by the NRA. In 1968 President Johnson and his administration intensified their efforts. Johnson began using the bully pulpit of the presidency to chide Congress publicly to enact his gun control policy. In his 1968 State of the Union address, Johnson exhorted Congress to pass a gun control law that would stop “mail order murder.” And months later, President Johnson conveyed to Congress, in no uncertain terms, his desire for crime legislation that required national registration of every gun in America and licenses for all gun owners. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate responded to the president’s admonishment in short order. Congressional representatives carefully, and often vociferously, argued about the provisions of the president’s crime legislation. The measure, titled the Safe Streets and Crime Control Bill, received stiff resistance from gun control opponents.

NRA OPPOSITION TO THE ACT

By 1968 the leadership of the NRA was fully against any and all gun regulations. The group undertook a mass-mailing lobbying effort to undermine the legislation. Their organized lobbying efforts proved successful in wiping out much of the support for gun licensing and registration restrictions. Congress eventually enacted the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, a watered-down version of the Johnson administration’s anticrime and gun control proposal. The act prohibited the interstate shipment of pistols and revolvers to individuals, but it specifically exempted rifles and shotguns from any regulations. With the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the groundswell of support for tough gun control laws reached unprecedented levels. On June 6, the day after the Kennedy assassination, Johnson signed the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, but lamented the law’s weak provisions. President Johnson, who had proposed gun control measures every year since becoming president, appeared on national television imploring Congress to pass a new and tougher gun control law that banned mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition. Reading a letter he sent to Congress, Johnson pleaded to Congress “in the name of sanity… in the name of safety and in the name of an aroused nation to give America the gun-control law it needs.” On June 24, President Johnson again addressed the country, calling for mandatory national gun registration and licenses for every gun owner. Around this time, polls showed that approximately 80 percent of Americans favoured gun registration laws. The public flooded members of Congress with letters demanding greater regulation of guns. Protestors picketed the Washington headquarters of the NRA. Even many members of Congress who had been staunch adversaries of strict firearms regulation crossed over to the other side and rallied in favour of a tough gun control bill.

ORGANIZED GUN CONTROL EFFORTS

Pro–gun control advocates mobilized and constructed an effective pro–gun control pressure group called the Emergency Committee for Gun Control. The bipartisan organization was headed by Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., a former astronaut and friend of Senator Robert Kennedy. The Committee, comprising volunteer staffers who had worked for Senator Kennedy before he was assassinated, received extensive support from a variety of organizations such as the American Bankers Association, the AFL-CIO, the Conference of Mayors, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Attorneys General, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Riding a wave of support, the Committee sought to counteract the highly organized and resource-laden NRA. Their efforts proved somewhat effective, but ultimately fell short of the group’s goal of a comprehensive scheme of gun registration and gun owner licensing. Facing this unprecedented, widespread push for gun control, the NRA became highly energized and rallied against the president’s proposed regulations. National Rifle Association executive vice-president Franklin L. Orth argued publicly that no law, existing or proposed, could have prevented the murder of Senator Kennedy. On June 15, 1968, the NRA mailed a letter to its members calling for them to write their members of Congress to oppose any new firearms laws. Using hyperbole and emotionally charged rhetoric, NRA President Harold W. Glassen wrote that the right of sportsmen to obtain, own, and use firearms for a legal purpose was in grave jeopardy. Furthermore, Glassen wrote, the clear goal of gun control proponents was complete abolition of civilian ownership of guns. Senator Joseph D. Tydings, Democrat of Maryland, who had introduced the provisions requiring licensing of gun owners and registration of firearms, responded to this accusation in a press conference calling the letter “calculated hysteria” and saying no bill would prevent law-abiding citizens from having guns. Nevertheless, Glassen’s tactic effectively energized the membership of the NRA, then 900,000 strong, just as the public outcry calling for more firearms regulations was dissipating. Whereas Congress had encountered overwhelming support for more gun control measures in the week after Senator Kennedy’s death, by late June and early July they reported the majority of the letters from constituents indicated opposition to any new gun control provisions. The battle over the president’s proposals continued in the halls of Congress in typical fashion, featuring emotionally charged debates and supporters split along specific demographic and ideological lines. In the House, opponents argued against a registration provision claiming it would be costly and ineffective in preventing crime. In the Senate, Dodd attacked the NRA, decrying its tactics of “blackmail, intimidation and unscrupulous propaganda.” The licensing and registration provisions, backed solidly by northern liberals, were easily defeated in both the House of Representatives and Senate by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. However, the provisions banning mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition fared better, passing both the House and Senate. Eastern and Midwestern members of Congress overwhelmingly supported these measures, while those from the South and West were much less supportive. Members of Congress representing urban areas staunchly supported the bill, whereas those from rural sections of the country voted against it in significant numbers.

PROVISIONS OF THE GUN CONTROL ACT

On October 22, President Johnson signed into law the Gun Control Act of 1968—an instrument which, just months earlier, was considered a lost cause because of staunch opposition. The signing of the legislation represented a significant political win for the president, Senator Dodd, and other gun control advocates who had struggled for years to pass a gun control bill that would effect real change. Enacted pursuant to the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, the legislation had three major features. First, it prohibited interstate traffic in firearms and ammunition. Second, it denied guns to specific classes of individuals such as felons, minors, fugitives, drug addicts, and the mentally ill. Third, it prohibited the importation of surplus military weapons into the United States as well as guns and ammunition not federally certified as sporting weapons or souvenirs. As is usually the case in American politics, the statute did not signify a complete victory for either side. Advocates of gun control failed to get provisions requiring owner licensing and firearms registration, yet gun control opponents, typically NRA members, suffered another setback to their goal of removing governmental regulation of firearms. This partial defeat for the NRA served as the group’s wake-up call, energizing and expanding the membership of the NRA who suddenly felt politically vulnerable. Yet unlike the NRA, the pro–gun control advocates were not organized for long-term pressure politics, and their political influence began to wane. Thus in 1986 the NRA successfully weakened the provisions of the 1968 act by spearheading the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act.

Utah Gun Lawyer Free Consultation

When you need legal help from a Gun Attorney in Utah, please call Ascent Law LLC for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Self Defense In Utah

Will A Chapter 13 Plan Look Better On My Credit Report Than Chapter 7?

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Source: https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/gun-control-act-of-1968/

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Gun Control Act Of 1968

This Legislation regulated interstate and foreign commerce in firearms, including importation, “prohibited persons”, and licensing provisions. After the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Gun Control Act is passed and imposes stricter licensing and regulation on the firearms industry, establishes new categories of firearms offenses, and prohibits the sale of firearms and ammunition to felons and certain other prohibited persons. It also imposes the first Federal jurisdiction over “destructive devices,” including bombs, mines, grenades and other similar devices. Congress reorganizes ATU into the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD) and delegates to them the enforcement of the Gun Control Act. “Forget the democratic processes, the judicial system and the talent for organization that have long been the distinctive marks of the U.S. Forget, too, the affluence (vast, if still not general enough) and the fundamental respect for law by most Americans. From the nation’s beginnings, in fact and fiction, the gun has been provider and protector.” Though the 1968 law was a victory of sorts for gun-control activists, many were disappointed it didn’t include a registry of firearms or federal licensing requirements for gun owners. TIME reported, “It may take another act of horror to push really effective gun curbs through Congress.” Those dynamics the disappointment of gun-control activists, particularly after moments of tragedy, running up against the very real place of guns in American society may sound familiar.

What are the most important things the law changed?

It banned interstate shipments of firearms and ammunition to private individuals [and] sales of guns to minors, drug addicts and “mental incompetents.” This is the first time you have in law that mentally unbalanced people ought not to be able to get gun also convicted felons. It also strengthened the licensing and record-keeping requirements for gun dealers, and that was significant because gun dealers were subject to virtually no systematic scrutiny up until this time, although a 1938 federal law did establish a fee they paid to government to be a licensed dealer. It banned importation of foreign-made surplus firearms, except those The President of the NRA, who had testified before Congress about the bill had said [paraphrasing], ‘We’re not thrilled with this, but we can live with it. I think it’s reasonable.’ The fact that he would concede there’s any such thing as a reasonable gun control legislation that represented the prevailing point of view of NRA leadership at the time, from 1968 to the late 1970s. Portions of the ’68 law were modified by a law passed by Congress in 1986, the Firearms Owners Protections Act, which sought to repeal even more of the law. It didn’t succeed, but the 1986 law does repeal or modify or blunt some of the aspects of the ’68 law. [It does that] by amending the ’68 law to allow for the interstate sale of rifles and shotguns as long as it was legal in the states of the buyer and seller, eliminating certain record-keeping requirements for ammunition dealers, and making it easier for individuals selling guns to do so without a license. The 1986 federal law was the culmination of the effort to try to roll back the 1968 law. The gun issue hadn’t been politicized in the ’60s the way it has been in the last few decades, where it has become even more angry and strident; 1968 was a year of political assassinations that shocked the nation. One of the great myths is the idea that gun-control laws are an artefact of the modern era, the 20th century. Gun laws are as old as America, literally to the very early colonial beginnings of the nation. From the beginning of the late 1600s to the end of the 1800s, gun laws were everywhere, thousands of gun laws of every imaginable variety. You find virtually every state in the union enacting laws that bar people from carrying concealed weapons. That’s something people don’t realize. The GCA is the main federal law that governs the interstate commerce of firearms in the United States. Specifically, the GCA prohibits firearms commerce across state lines except between licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. Under the GCA, any individual or company that wants to partake in commercial activity dealing with the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms must possess a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Procedural jargon notwithstanding, the enactment of 1968 GCA was a watershed moment in US politics. It was the first piece of legislation that put the gun control debate on the map.

Political Context of the GCA

It should be noted that the GCA was not the first piece of gun control passed at the federal level. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act of 1934 into law. The first comprehensive gun law at the federal level, the NFA taxed and mandated registration of certain firearms such as machine guns, sawed-off rifles, and sawed-off shotguns. This law was passed under the pretext of addressing mob-style violence during Prohibition, but a careful review of the New Deal era shows how the NFA was just another piece of FDR’s unprecedented social engineering program. This NFA was followed up by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which created a precursor to the 1968 GCA’s FFL system. Despite the government’s encroachments on gun rights, the federal government stayed away from further regulation for the next three decades. The passage of the GCA wasn’t without its fair share of opposition. Groups like the National Rifle Association, which traditionally focused on conservation and outdoor niches, were compelled to take nominally pro-gun stances. However, the NRA wasn’t alone. Groups like Gun Owners of America came into the spotlight, positioning themselves as a “no compromise” alternative to NRA. By the early 1980s, pro-gun lobbies would become pivotal actors in the never-ending circus of DC politics.

deas are Still Key

As the days go by, gun rights appear to be gradually falling down the path of statist micromanagement. But there’s something more fundamental to this trend than the cliché aphorism of eternal vigilance and conventional strategies of political activism. It really comes down to the battle of ideas. The GCA is a child of the New Deal and Great Society mindset that views the government as an omnipotent administrator of human affairs. A paradigm shift in ideas is needed to break free from this top-down vision of society. Until then, gun lobbies face an uphill battle. A solid first step is for gun owners to recognize that infringements like the GCA of 1968 must never be tolerated by anyone who believes in the right to self-defense. After three decades of quiescence in the arena of gun control politics, the turmoil of the 1960s unleashed a wave of demand for new gun control legislation. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, prompted the country to focus on the regulation of firearms. Then the urban riots beginning in 1964 and the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy fueled an inferno of outrage that demanded congressional action. In the wake of these acts of violence the U.S. Congress enacted the Gun Control Act which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1968. Although the Gun Control Act did not contain the owner licensing and gun registration provisions that President Johnson desired, the act, along with the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act passed by Congress months earlier, contained the most significant restrictions on firearms since Congress enacted the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION IN THE 1960s

A highly controversial bill that precipitated emotional debate and ferocious political battles, the Gun Control Act travelled quite a convoluted path prior to its ultimate approval by Congress. It started down its torturous road in 1963 when Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, championed legislation geared specifically at tightening restrictions on the sale of mail-order handguns. After President Kennedy was murdered with a military-style rifle obtained through the mail, Senator Dodd extended the reach of the legislation to include “long guns,” including rifles and shotguns. The legislation met an early demise when it was held up in the Commerce Committee and not allowed out for a vote on the Senate floor. Interestingly, the National Rifle Association (NRA) leaders initially supported the measures and even engaged in drafting Dodd’s bill. Yet the NRA leadership did not wish to alienate its more radical rank and file, so they neglected to divulge this to their members. Instead, in a letter to each of its affiliates, the NRA claimed its executive vice-president testified against the bill and prevented it from being voted out of Committee.

The NRA publication The Rifleman criticized the bill as a product of “irrational emotionalism,” and the first four issues of The Rifleman in 1964 dedicated more than thirty columns to firearms legislation, never telling its members of the NRA leadership’s support of the bill. These publications provoked the grass roots members to send off a great number of angry letters opposing the bill to Congress. In 1965 President Johnson aggressively endorsed the cause of fighting crime and regulating firearms by spearheading a new, strict gun control measure that Dodd introduced in the Senate. But the Johnson administration’s proposal suffered a string of defeats over the next three years because of heavy pressure from the NRA, key congressional leaders who supported them, the American Legion, and gun importers, manufacturers, and dealers. Adding to the administration’s difficulties was the lack of an organized pro–gun control lobby to check the relentless onslaughts against the legislation by the NRA. In 1968 President Johnson and his administration intensified their efforts. Johnson began using the bully pulpit of the presidency to chide Congress publicly to enact his gun control policy. In his 1968 State of the Union address, Johnson exhorted Congress to pass a gun control law that would stop “mail order murder.” And months later, President Johnson conveyed to Congress, in no uncertain terms, his desire for crime legislation that required national registration of every gun in America and licenses for all gun owners. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate responded to the president’s admonishment in short order. Congressional representatives carefully, and often vociferously, argued about the provisions of the president’s crime legislation. The measure, titled the Safe Streets and Crime Control Bill, received stiff resistance from gun control opponents.

NRA OPPOSITION TO THE ACT

By 1968 the leadership of the NRA was fully against any and all gun regulations. The group undertook a mass-mailing lobbying effort to undermine the legislation. Their organized lobbying efforts proved successful in wiping out much of the support for gun licensing and registration restrictions. Congress eventually enacted the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, a watered-down version of the Johnson administration’s anticrime and gun control proposal. The act prohibited the interstate shipment of pistols and revolvers to individuals, but it specifically exempted rifles and shotguns from any regulations. With the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the groundswell of support for tough gun control laws reached unprecedented levels. On June 6, the day after the Kennedy assassination, Johnson signed the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, but lamented the law’s weak provisions. President Johnson, who had proposed gun control measures every year since becoming president, appeared on national television imploring Congress to pass a new and tougher gun control law that banned mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition. Reading a letter he sent to Congress, Johnson pleaded to Congress “in the name of sanity… in the name of safety and in the name of an aroused nation to give America the gun-control law it needs.” On June 24, President Johnson again addressed the country, calling for mandatory national gun registration and licenses for every gun owner. Around this time, polls showed that approximately 80 percent of Americans favoured gun registration laws. The public flooded members of Congress with letters demanding greater regulation of guns. Protestors picketed the Washington headquarters of the NRA. Even many members of Congress who had been staunch adversaries of strict firearms regulation crossed over to the other side and rallied in favour of a tough gun control bill.

ORGANIZED GUN CONTROL EFFORTS

Pro–gun control advocates mobilized and constructed an effective pro–gun control pressure group called the Emergency Committee for Gun Control. The bipartisan organization was headed by Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., a former astronaut and friend of Senator Robert Kennedy. The Committee, comprising volunteer staffers who had worked for Senator Kennedy before he was assassinated, received extensive support from a variety of organizations such as the American Bankers Association, the AFL-CIO, the Conference of Mayors, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Attorneys General, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Riding a wave of support, the Committee sought to counteract the highly organized and resource-laden NRA. Their efforts proved somewhat effective, but ultimately fell short of the group’s goal of a comprehensive scheme of gun registration and gun owner licensing. Facing this unprecedented, widespread push for gun control, the NRA became highly energized and rallied against the president’s proposed regulations. National Rifle Association executive vice-president Franklin L. Orth argued publicly that no law, existing or proposed, could have prevented the murder of Senator Kennedy. On June 15, 1968, the NRA mailed a letter to its members calling for them to write their members of Congress to oppose any new firearms laws. Using hyperbole and emotionally charged rhetoric, NRA President Harold W. Glassen wrote that the right of sportsmen to obtain, own, and use firearms for a legal purpose was in grave jeopardy. Furthermore, Glassen wrote, the clear goal of gun control proponents was complete abolition of civilian ownership of guns. Senator Joseph D. Tydings, Democrat of Maryland, who had introduced the provisions requiring licensing of gun owners and registration of firearms, responded to this accusation in a press conference calling the letter “calculated hysteria” and saying no bill would prevent law-abiding citizens from having guns. Nevertheless, Glassen’s tactic effectively energized the membership of the NRA, then 900,000 strong, just as the public outcry calling for more firearms regulations was dissipating. Whereas Congress had encountered overwhelming support for more gun control measures in the week after Senator Kennedy’s death, by late June and early July they reported the majority of the letters from constituents indicated opposition to any new gun control provisions. The battle over the president’s proposals continued in the halls of Congress in typical fashion, featuring emotionally charged debates and supporters split along specific demographic and ideological lines. In the House, opponents argued against a registration provision claiming it would be costly and ineffective in preventing crime. In the Senate, Dodd attacked the NRA, decrying its tactics of “blackmail, intimidation and unscrupulous propaganda.” The licensing and registration provisions, backed solidly by northern liberals, were easily defeated in both the House of Representatives and Senate by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. However, the provisions banning mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition fared better, passing both the House and Senate. Eastern and Midwestern members of Congress overwhelmingly supported these measures, while those from the South and West were much less supportive. Members of Congress representing urban areas staunchly supported the bill, whereas those from rural sections of the country voted against it in significant numbers.

PROVISIONS OF THE GUN CONTROL ACT

On October 22, President Johnson signed into law the Gun Control Act of 1968—an instrument which, just months earlier, was considered a lost cause because of staunch opposition. The signing of the legislation represented a significant political win for the president, Senator Dodd, and other gun control advocates who had struggled for years to pass a gun control bill that would effect real change. Enacted pursuant to the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, the legislation had three major features. First, it prohibited interstate traffic in firearms and ammunition. Second, it denied guns to specific classes of individuals such as felons, minors, fugitives, drug addicts, and the mentally ill. Third, it prohibited the importation of surplus military weapons into the United States as well as guns and ammunition not federally certified as sporting weapons or souvenirs. As is usually the case in American politics, the statute did not signify a complete victory for either side. Advocates of gun control failed to get provisions requiring owner licensing and firearms registration, yet gun control opponents, typically NRA members, suffered another setback to their goal of removing governmental regulation of firearms. This partial defeat for the NRA served as the group’s wake-up call, energizing and expanding the membership of the NRA who suddenly felt politically vulnerable. Yet unlike the NRA, the pro–gun control advocates were not organized for long-term pressure politics, and their political influence began to wane. Thus in 1986 the NRA successfully weakened the provisions of the 1968 act by spearheading the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act.

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Source: https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/gun-control-act-of-1968/

[melissawalker01]

Gun Control Act Of 1968

This Legislation regulated interstate and foreign commerce in firearms, including importation, “prohibited persons”, and licensing provisions. After the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Gun Control Act is passed and imposes stricter licensing and regulation on the firearms industry, establishes new categories of firearms offenses, and prohibits the sale of firearms and ammunition to felons and certain other prohibited persons. It also imposes the first Federal jurisdiction over “destructive devices,” including bombs, mines, grenades and other similar devices. Congress reorganizes ATU into the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD) and delegates to them the enforcement of the Gun Control Act. “Forget the democratic processes, the judicial system and the talent for organization that have long been the distinctive marks of the U.S. Forget, too, the affluence (vast, if still not general enough) and the fundamental respect for law by most Americans. From the nation’s beginnings, in fact and fiction, the gun has been provider and protector.” Though the 1968 law was a victory of sorts for gun-control activists, many were disappointed it didn’t include a registry of firearms or federal licensing requirements for gun owners. TIME reported, “It may take another act of horror to push really effective gun curbs through Congress.” Those dynamics the disappointment of gun-control activists, particularly after moments of tragedy, running up against the very real place of guns in American society may sound familiar.

What are the most important things the law changed?

It banned interstate shipments of firearms and ammunition to private individuals [and] sales of guns to minors, drug addicts and “mental incompetents.” This is the first time you have in law that mentally unbalanced people ought not to be able to get gun also convicted felons. It also strengthened the licensing and record-keeping requirements for gun dealers, and that was significant because gun dealers were subject to virtually no systematic scrutiny up until this time, although a 1938 federal law did establish a fee they paid to government to be a licensed dealer. It banned importation of foreign-made surplus firearms, except those The President of the NRA, who had testified before Congress about the bill had said [paraphrasing], ‘We’re not thrilled with this, but we can live with it. I think it’s reasonable.’ The fact that he would concede there’s any such thing as a reasonable gun control legislation that represented the prevailing point of view of NRA leadership at the time, from 1968 to the late 1970s. Portions of the ’68 law were modified by a law passed by Congress in 1986, the Firearms Owners Protections Act, which sought to repeal even more of the law. It didn’t succeed, but the 1986 law does repeal or modify or blunt some of the aspects of the ’68 law. [It does that] by amending the ’68 law to allow for the interstate sale of rifles and shotguns as long as it was legal in the states of the buyer and seller, eliminating certain record-keeping requirements for ammunition dealers, and making it easier for individuals selling guns to do so without a license. The 1986 federal law was the culmination of the effort to try to roll back the 1968 law. The gun issue hadn’t been politicized in the ’60s the way it has been in the last few decades, where it has become even more angry and strident; 1968 was a year of political assassinations that shocked the nation. One of the great myths is the idea that gun-control laws are an artefact of the modern era, the 20th century. Gun laws are as old as America, literally to the very early colonial beginnings of the nation. From the beginning of the late 1600s to the end of the 1800s, gun laws were everywhere, thousands of gun laws of every imaginable variety. You find virtually every state in the union enacting laws that bar people from carrying concealed weapons. That’s something people don’t realize. The GCA is the main federal law that governs the interstate commerce of firearms in the United States. Specifically, the GCA prohibits firearms commerce across state lines except between licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. Under the GCA, any individual or company that wants to partake in commercial activity dealing with the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms must possess a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Procedural jargon notwithstanding, the enactment of 1968 GCA was a watershed moment in US politics. It was the first piece of legislation that put the gun control debate on the map.

Political Context of the GCA

It should be noted that the GCA was not the first piece of gun control passed at the federal level. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act of 1934 into law. The first comprehensive gun law at the federal level, the NFA taxed and mandated registration of certain firearms such as machine guns, sawed-off rifles, and sawed-off shotguns. This law was passed under the pretext of addressing mob-style violence during Prohibition, but a careful review of the New Deal era shows how the NFA was just another piece of FDR’s unprecedented social engineering program. This NFA was followed up by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which created a precursor to the 1968 GCA’s FFL system. Despite the government’s encroachments on gun rights, the federal government stayed away from further regulation for the next three decades. The passage of the GCA wasn’t without its fair share of opposition. Groups like the National Rifle Association, which traditionally focused on conservation and outdoor niches, were compelled to take nominally pro-gun stances. However, the NRA wasn’t alone. Groups like Gun Owners of America came into the spotlight, positioning themselves as a “no compromise” alternative to NRA. By the early 1980s, pro-gun lobbies would become pivotal actors in the never-ending circus of DC politics.

deas are Still Key

As the days go by, gun rights appear to be gradually falling down the path of statist micromanagement. But there’s something more fundamental to this trend than the cliché aphorism of eternal vigilance and conventional strategies of political activism. It really comes down to the battle of ideas. The GCA is a child of the New Deal and Great Society mindset that views the government as an omnipotent administrator of human affairs. A paradigm shift in ideas is needed to break free from this top-down vision of society. Until then, gun lobbies face an uphill battle. A solid first step is for gun owners to recognize that infringements like the GCA of 1968 must never be tolerated by anyone who believes in the right to self-defense. After three decades of quiescence in the arena of gun control politics, the turmoil of the 1960s unleashed a wave of demand for new gun control legislation. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, prompted the country to focus on the regulation of firearms. Then the urban riots beginning in 1964 and the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy fueled an inferno of outrage that demanded congressional action. In the wake of these acts of violence the U.S. Congress enacted the Gun Control Act which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1968. Although the Gun Control Act did not contain the owner licensing and gun registration provisions that President Johnson desired, the act, along with the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act passed by Congress months earlier, contained the most significant restrictions on firearms since Congress enacted the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION IN THE 1960s

A highly controversial bill that precipitated emotional debate and ferocious political battles, the Gun Control Act travelled quite a convoluted path prior to its ultimate approval by Congress. It started down its torturous road in 1963 when Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, championed legislation geared specifically at tightening restrictions on the sale of mail-order handguns. After President Kennedy was murdered with a military-style rifle obtained through the mail, Senator Dodd extended the reach of the legislation to include “long guns,” including rifles and shotguns. The legislation met an early demise when it was held up in the Commerce Committee and not allowed out for a vote on the Senate floor. Interestingly, the National Rifle Association (NRA) leaders initially supported the measures and even engaged in drafting Dodd’s bill. Yet the NRA leadership did not wish to alienate its more radical rank and file, so they neglected to divulge this to their members. Instead, in a letter to each of its affiliates, the NRA claimed its executive vice-president testified against the bill and prevented it from being voted out of Committee.

The NRA publication The Rifleman criticized the bill as a product of “irrational emotionalism,” and the first four issues of The Rifleman in 1964 dedicated more than thirty columns to firearms legislation, never telling its members of the NRA leadership’s support of the bill. These publications provoked the grass roots members to send off a great number of angry letters opposing the bill to Congress. In 1965 President Johnson aggressively endorsed the cause of fighting crime and regulating firearms by spearheading a new, strict gun control measure that Dodd introduced in the Senate. But the Johnson administration’s proposal suffered a string of defeats over the next three years because of heavy pressure from the NRA, key congressional leaders who supported them, the American Legion, and gun importers, manufacturers, and dealers. Adding to the administration’s difficulties was the lack of an organized pro–gun control lobby to check the relentless onslaughts against the legislation by the NRA. In 1968 President Johnson and his administration intensified their efforts. Johnson began using the bully pulpit of the presidency to chide Congress publicly to enact his gun control policy. In his 1968 State of the Union address, Johnson exhorted Congress to pass a gun control law that would stop “mail order murder.” And months later, President Johnson conveyed to Congress, in no uncertain terms, his desire for crime legislation that required national registration of every gun in America and licenses for all gun owners. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate responded to the president’s admonishment in short order. Congressional representatives carefully, and often vociferously, argued about the provisions of the president’s crime legislation. The measure, titled the Safe Streets and Crime Control Bill, received stiff resistance from gun control opponents.

NRA OPPOSITION TO THE ACT

By 1968 the leadership of the NRA was fully against any and all gun regulations. The group undertook a mass-mailing lobbying effort to undermine the legislation. Their organized lobbying efforts proved successful in wiping out much of the support for gun licensing and registration restrictions. Congress eventually enacted the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, a watered-down version of the Johnson administration’s anticrime and gun control proposal. The act prohibited the interstate shipment of pistols and revolvers to individuals, but it specifically exempted rifles and shotguns from any regulations. With the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the groundswell of support for tough gun control laws reached unprecedented levels. On June 6, the day after the Kennedy assassination, Johnson signed the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, but lamented the law’s weak provisions. President Johnson, who had proposed gun control measures every year since becoming president, appeared on national television imploring Congress to pass a new and tougher gun control law that banned mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition. Reading a letter he sent to Congress, Johnson pleaded to Congress “in the name of sanity… in the name of safety and in the name of an aroused nation to give America the gun-control law it needs.” On June 24, President Johnson again addressed the country, calling for mandatory national gun registration and licenses for every gun owner. Around this time, polls showed that approximately 80 percent of Americans favoured gun registration laws. The public flooded members of Congress with letters demanding greater regulation of guns. Protestors picketed the Washington headquarters of the NRA. Even many members of Congress who had been staunch adversaries of strict firearms regulation crossed over to the other side and rallied in favour of a tough gun control bill.

ORGANIZED GUN CONTROL EFFORTS

Pro–gun control advocates mobilized and constructed an effective pro–gun control pressure group called the Emergency Committee for Gun Control. The bipartisan organization was headed by Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., a former astronaut and friend of Senator Robert Kennedy. The Committee, comprising volunteer staffers who had worked for Senator Kennedy before he was assassinated, received extensive support from a variety of organizations such as the American Bankers Association, the AFL-CIO, the Conference of Mayors, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Attorneys General, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Riding a wave of support, the Committee sought to counteract the highly organized and resource-laden NRA. Their efforts proved somewhat effective, but ultimately fell short of the group’s goal of a comprehensive scheme of gun registration and gun owner licensing. Facing this unprecedented, widespread push for gun control, the NRA became highly energized and rallied against the president’s proposed regulations. National Rifle Association executive vice-president Franklin L. Orth argued publicly that no law, existing or proposed, could have prevented the murder of Senator Kennedy. On June 15, 1968, the NRA mailed a letter to its members calling for them to write their members of Congress to oppose any new firearms laws. Using hyperbole and emotionally charged rhetoric, NRA President Harold W. Glassen wrote that the right of sportsmen to obtain, own, and use firearms for a legal purpose was in grave jeopardy. Furthermore, Glassen wrote, the clear goal of gun control proponents was complete abolition of civilian ownership of guns. Senator Joseph D. Tydings, Democrat of Maryland, who had introduced the provisions requiring licensing of gun owners and registration of firearms, responded to this accusation in a press conference calling the letter “calculated hysteria” and saying no bill would prevent law-abiding citizens from having guns. Nevertheless, Glassen’s tactic effectively energized the membership of the NRA, then 900,000 strong, just as the public outcry calling for more firearms regulations was dissipating. Whereas Congress had encountered overwhelming support for more gun control measures in the week after Senator Kennedy’s death, by late June and early July they reported the majority of the letters from constituents indicated opposition to any new gun control provisions. The battle over the president’s proposals continued in the halls of Congress in typical fashion, featuring emotionally charged debates and supporters split along specific demographic and ideological lines. In the House, opponents argued against a registration provision claiming it would be costly and ineffective in preventing crime. In the Senate, Dodd attacked the NRA, decrying its tactics of “blackmail, intimidation and unscrupulous propaganda.” The licensing and registration provisions, backed solidly by northern liberals, were easily defeated in both the House of Representatives and Senate by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. However, the provisions banning mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition fared better, passing both the House and Senate. Eastern and Midwestern members of Congress overwhelmingly supported these measures, while those from the South and West were much less supportive. Members of Congress representing urban areas staunchly supported the bill, whereas those from rural sections of the country voted against it in significant numbers.

PROVISIONS OF THE GUN CONTROL ACT

On October 22, President Johnson signed into law the Gun Control Act of 1968—an instrument which, just months earlier, was considered a lost cause because of staunch opposition. The signing of the legislation represented a significant political win for the president, Senator Dodd, and other gun control advocates who had struggled for years to pass a gun control bill that would effect real change. Enacted pursuant to the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, the legislation had three major features. First, it prohibited interstate traffic in firearms and ammunition. Second, it denied guns to specific classes of individuals such as felons, minors, fugitives, drug addicts, and the mentally ill. Third, it prohibited the importation of surplus military weapons into the United States as well as guns and ammunition not federally certified as sporting weapons or souvenirs. As is usually the case in American politics, the statute did not signify a complete victory for either side. Advocates of gun control failed to get provisions requiring owner licensing and firearms registration, yet gun control opponents, typically NRA members, suffered another setback to their goal of removing governmental regulation of firearms. This partial defeat for the NRA served as the group’s wake-up call, energizing and expanding the membership of the NRA who suddenly felt politically vulnerable. Yet unlike the NRA, the pro–gun control advocates were not organized for long-term pressure politics, and their political influence began to wane. Thus in 1986 the NRA successfully weakened the provisions of the 1968 act by spearheading the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act.

Utah Gun Lawyer Free Consultation

When you need legal help from a Gun Attorney in Utah, please call Ascent Law LLC for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

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Why Draining Your Retirement To Save A Doomed House From Foreclosure Before Filing Bankruptcy Is A Mistake

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from Michael Anderson https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/gun-control-act-of-1968/ from Divorce Lawyer Nelson Farms Utah https://divorcelawyernelsonfarmsutah.tumblr.com/post/619687253350973440

[coming-from-hell]

Gun Control Act Of 1968

This Legislation regulated interstate and foreign commerce in firearms, including importation, “prohibited persons”, and licensing provisions. After the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Gun Control Act is passed and imposes stricter licensing and regulation on the firearms industry, establishes new categories of firearms offenses, and prohibits the sale of firearms and ammunition to felons and certain other prohibited persons. It also imposes the first Federal jurisdiction over “destructive devices,” including bombs, mines, grenades and other similar devices. Congress reorganizes ATU into the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD) and delegates to them the enforcement of the Gun Control Act. “Forget the democratic processes, the judicial system and the talent for organization that have long been the distinctive marks of the U.S. Forget, too, the affluence (vast, if still not general enough) and the fundamental respect for law by most Americans. From the nation’s beginnings, in fact and fiction, the gun has been provider and protector.” Though the 1968 law was a victory of sorts for gun-control activists, many were disappointed it didn’t include a registry of firearms or federal licensing requirements for gun owners. TIME reported, “It may take another act of horror to push really effective gun curbs through Congress.” Those dynamics the disappointment of gun-control activists, particularly after moments of tragedy, running up against the very real place of guns in American society may sound familiar.

What are the most important things the law changed?

It banned interstate shipments of firearms and ammunition to private individuals [and] sales of guns to minors, drug addicts and “mental incompetents.” This is the first time you have in law that mentally unbalanced people ought not to be able to get gun also convicted felons. It also strengthened the licensing and record-keeping requirements for gun dealers, and that was significant because gun dealers were subject to virtually no systematic scrutiny up until this time, although a 1938 federal law did establish a fee they paid to government to be a licensed dealer. It banned importation of foreign-made surplus firearms, except those The President of the NRA, who had testified before Congress about the bill had said [paraphrasing], ‘We’re not thrilled with this, but we can live with it. I think it’s reasonable.’ The fact that he would concede there’s any such thing as a reasonable gun control legislation that represented the prevailing point of view of NRA leadership at the time, from 1968 to the late 1970s. Portions of the ’68 law were modified by a law passed by Congress in 1986, the Firearms Owners Protections Act, which sought to repeal even more of the law. It didn’t succeed, but the 1986 law does repeal or modify or blunt some of the aspects of the ’68 law. [It does that] by amending the ’68 law to allow for the interstate sale of rifles and shotguns as long as it was legal in the states of the buyer and seller, eliminating certain record-keeping requirements for ammunition dealers, and making it easier for individuals selling guns to do so without a license. The 1986 federal law was the culmination of the effort to try to roll back the 1968 law. The gun issue hadn’t been politicized in the ’60s the way it has been in the last few decades, where it has become even more angry and strident; 1968 was a year of political assassinations that shocked the nation. One of the great myths is the idea that gun-control laws are an artefact of the modern era, the 20th century. Gun laws are as old as America, literally to the very early colonial beginnings of the nation. From the beginning of the late 1600s to the end of the 1800s, gun laws were everywhere, thousands of gun laws of every imaginable variety. You find virtually every state in the union enacting laws that bar people from carrying concealed weapons. That’s something people don’t realize. The GCA is the main federal law that governs the interstate commerce of firearms in the United States. Specifically, the GCA prohibits firearms commerce across state lines except between licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. Under the GCA, any individual or company that wants to partake in commercial activity dealing with the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms must possess a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Procedural jargon notwithstanding, the enactment of 1968 GCA was a watershed moment in US politics. It was the first piece of legislation that put the gun control debate on the map.

Political Context of the GCA

It should be noted that the GCA was not the first piece of gun control passed at the federal level. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act of 1934 into law. The first comprehensive gun law at the federal level, the NFA taxed and mandated registration of certain firearms such as machine guns, sawed-off rifles, and sawed-off shotguns. This law was passed under the pretext of addressing mob-style violence during Prohibition, but a careful review of the New Deal era shows how the NFA was just another piece of FDR’s unprecedented social engineering program. This NFA was followed up by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which created a precursor to the 1968 GCA’s FFL system. Despite the government’s encroachments on gun rights, the federal government stayed away from further regulation for the next three decades. The passage of the GCA wasn’t without its fair share of opposition. Groups like the National Rifle Association, which traditionally focused on conservation and outdoor niches, were compelled to take nominally pro-gun stances. However, the NRA wasn’t alone. Groups like Gun Owners of America came into the spotlight, positioning themselves as a “no compromise” alternative to NRA. By the early 1980s, pro-gun lobbies would become pivotal actors in the never-ending circus of DC politics.

deas are Still Key

As the days go by, gun rights appear to be gradually falling down the path of statist micromanagement. But there’s something more fundamental to this trend than the cliché aphorism of eternal vigilance and conventional strategies of political activism. It really comes down to the battle of ideas. The GCA is a child of the New Deal and Great Society mindset that views the government as an omnipotent administrator of human affairs. A paradigm shift in ideas is needed to break free from this top-down vision of society. Until then, gun lobbies face an uphill battle. A solid first step is for gun owners to recognize that infringements like the GCA of 1968 must never be tolerated by anyone who believes in the right to self-defense. After three decades of quiescence in the arena of gun control politics, the turmoil of the 1960s unleashed a wave of demand for new gun control legislation. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, prompted the country to focus on the regulation of firearms. Then the urban riots beginning in 1964 and the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy fueled an inferno of outrage that demanded congressional action. In the wake of these acts of violence the U.S. Congress enacted the Gun Control Act which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1968. Although the Gun Control Act did not contain the owner licensing and gun registration provisions that President Johnson desired, the act, along with the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act passed by Congress months earlier, contained the most significant restrictions on firearms since Congress enacted the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION IN THE 1960s

A highly controversial bill that precipitated emotional debate and ferocious political battles, the Gun Control Act travelled quite a convoluted path prior to its ultimate approval by Congress. It started down its torturous road in 1963 when Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, championed legislation geared specifically at tightening restrictions on the sale of mail-order handguns. After President Kennedy was murdered with a military-style rifle obtained through the mail, Senator Dodd extended the reach of the legislation to include “long guns,” including rifles and shotguns. The legislation met an early demise when it was held up in the Commerce Committee and not allowed out for a vote on the Senate floor. Interestingly, the National Rifle Association (NRA) leaders initially supported the measures and even engaged in drafting Dodd’s bill. Yet the NRA leadership did not wish to alienate its more radical rank and file, so they neglected to divulge this to their members. Instead, in a letter to each of its affiliates, the NRA claimed its executive vice-president testified against the bill and prevented it from being voted out of Committee.

The NRA publication The Rifleman criticized the bill as a product of “irrational emotionalism,” and the first four issues of The Rifleman in 1964 dedicated more than thirty columns to firearms legislation, never telling its members of the NRA leadership’s support of the bill. These publications provoked the grass roots members to send off a great number of angry letters opposing the bill to Congress. In 1965 President Johnson aggressively endorsed the cause of fighting crime and regulating firearms by spearheading a new, strict gun control measure that Dodd introduced in the Senate. But the Johnson administration’s proposal suffered a string of defeats over the next three years because of heavy pressure from the NRA, key congressional leaders who supported them, the American Legion, and gun importers, manufacturers, and dealers. Adding to the administration’s difficulties was the lack of an organized pro–gun control lobby to check the relentless onslaughts against the legislation by the NRA. In 1968 President Johnson and his administration intensified their efforts. Johnson began using the bully pulpit of the presidency to chide Congress publicly to enact his gun control policy. In his 1968 State of the Union address, Johnson exhorted Congress to pass a gun control law that would stop “mail order murder.” And months later, President Johnson conveyed to Congress, in no uncertain terms, his desire for crime legislation that required national registration of every gun in America and licenses for all gun owners. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate responded to the president’s admonishment in short order. Congressional representatives carefully, and often vociferously, argued about the provisions of the president’s crime legislation. The measure, titled the Safe Streets and Crime Control Bill, received stiff resistance from gun control opponents.

NRA OPPOSITION TO THE ACT

By 1968 the leadership of the NRA was fully against any and all gun regulations. The group undertook a mass-mailing lobbying effort to undermine the legislation. Their organized lobbying efforts proved successful in wiping out much of the support for gun licensing and registration restrictions. Congress eventually enacted the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, a watered-down version of the Johnson administration’s anticrime and gun control proposal. The act prohibited the interstate shipment of pistols and revolvers to individuals, but it specifically exempted rifles and shotguns from any regulations. With the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the groundswell of support for tough gun control laws reached unprecedented levels. On June 6, the day after the Kennedy assassination, Johnson signed the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, but lamented the law’s weak provisions. President Johnson, who had proposed gun control measures every year since becoming president, appeared on national television imploring Congress to pass a new and tougher gun control law that banned mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition. Reading a letter he sent to Congress, Johnson pleaded to Congress “in the name of sanity… in the name of safety and in the name of an aroused nation to give America the gun-control law it needs.” On June 24, President Johnson again addressed the country, calling for mandatory national gun registration and licenses for every gun owner. Around this time, polls showed that approximately 80 percent of Americans favoured gun registration laws. The public flooded members of Congress with letters demanding greater regulation of guns. Protestors picketed the Washington headquarters of the NRA. Even many members of Congress who had been staunch adversaries of strict firearms regulation crossed over to the other side and rallied in favour of a tough gun control bill.

ORGANIZED GUN CONTROL EFFORTS

Pro–gun control advocates mobilized and constructed an effective pro–gun control pressure group called the Emergency Committee for Gun Control. The bipartisan organization was headed by Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., a former astronaut and friend of Senator Robert Kennedy. The Committee, comprising volunteer staffers who had worked for Senator Kennedy before he was assassinated, received extensive support from a variety of organizations such as the American Bankers Association, the AFL-CIO, the Conference of Mayors, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Attorneys General, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Riding a wave of support, the Committee sought to counteract the highly organized and resource-laden NRA. Their efforts proved somewhat effective, but ultimately fell short of the group’s goal of a comprehensive scheme of gun registration and gun owner licensing. Facing this unprecedented, widespread push for gun control, the NRA became highly energized and rallied against the president’s proposed regulations. National Rifle Association executive vice-president Franklin L. Orth argued publicly that no law, existing or proposed, could have prevented the murder of Senator Kennedy. On June 15, 1968, the NRA mailed a letter to its members calling for them to write their members of Congress to oppose any new firearms laws. Using hyperbole and emotionally charged rhetoric, NRA President Harold W. Glassen wrote that the right of sportsmen to obtain, own, and use firearms for a legal purpose was in grave jeopardy. Furthermore, Glassen wrote, the clear goal of gun control proponents was complete abolition of civilian ownership of guns. Senator Joseph D. Tydings, Democrat of Maryland, who had introduced the provisions requiring licensing of gun owners and registration of firearms, responded to this accusation in a press conference calling the letter “calculated hysteria” and saying no bill would prevent law-abiding citizens from having guns. Nevertheless, Glassen’s tactic effectively energized the membership of the NRA, then 900,000 strong, just as the public outcry calling for more firearms regulations was dissipating. Whereas Congress had encountered overwhelming support for more gun control measures in the week after Senator Kennedy’s death, by late June and early July they reported the majority of the letters from constituents indicated opposition to any new gun control provisions. The battle over the president’s proposals continued in the halls of Congress in typical fashion, featuring emotionally charged debates and supporters split along specific demographic and ideological lines. In the House, opponents argued against a registration provision claiming it would be costly and ineffective in preventing crime. In the Senate, Dodd attacked the NRA, decrying its tactics of “blackmail, intimidation and unscrupulous propaganda.” The licensing and registration provisions, backed solidly by northern liberals, were easily defeated in both the House of Representatives and Senate by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. However, the provisions banning mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition fared better, passing both the House and Senate. Eastern and Midwestern members of Congress overwhelmingly supported these measures, while those from the South and West were much less supportive. Members of Congress representing urban areas staunchly supported the bill, whereas those from rural sections of the country voted against it in significant numbers.

PROVISIONS OF THE GUN CONTROL ACT

On October 22, President Johnson signed into law the Gun Control Act of 1968—an instrument which, just months earlier, was considered a lost cause because of staunch opposition. The signing of the legislation represented a significant political win for the president, Senator Dodd, and other gun control advocates who had struggled for years to pass a gun control bill that would effect real change. Enacted pursuant to the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, the legislation had three major features. First, it prohibited interstate traffic in firearms and ammunition. Second, it denied guns to specific classes of individuals such as felons, minors, fugitives, drug addicts, and the mentally ill. Third, it prohibited the importation of surplus military weapons into the United States as well as guns and ammunition not federally certified as sporting weapons or souvenirs. As is usually the case in American politics, the statute did not signify a complete victory for either side. Advocates of gun control failed to get provisions requiring owner licensing and firearms registration, yet gun control opponents, typically NRA members, suffered another setback to their goal of removing governmental regulation of firearms. This partial defeat for the NRA served as the group’s wake-up call, energizing and expanding the membership of the NRA who suddenly felt politically vulnerable. Yet unlike the NRA, the pro–gun control advocates were not organized for long-term pressure politics, and their political influence began to wane. Thus in 1986 the NRA successfully weakened the provisions of the 1968 act by spearheading the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act.

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Source: https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/gun-control-act-of-1968/

[divorcelawyergunnisonutah]

Gun Control Act Of 1968

This Legislation regulated interstate and foreign commerce in firearms, including importation, “prohibited persons”, and licensing provisions. After the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Gun Control Act is passed and imposes stricter licensing and regulation on the firearms industry, establishes new categories of firearms offenses, and prohibits the sale of firearms and ammunition to felons and certain other prohibited persons. It also imposes the first Federal jurisdiction over “destructive devices,” including bombs, mines, grenades and other similar devices. Congress reorganizes ATU into the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD) and delegates to them the enforcement of the Gun Control Act. “Forget the democratic processes, the judicial system and the talent for organization that have long been the distinctive marks of the U.S. Forget, too, the affluence (vast, if still not general enough) and the fundamental respect for law by most Americans. From the nation’s beginnings, in fact and fiction, the gun has been provider and protector.” Though the 1968 law was a victory of sorts for gun-control activists, many were disappointed it didn’t include a registry of firearms or federal licensing requirements for gun owners. TIME reported, “It may take another act of horror to push really effective gun curbs through Congress.” Those dynamics the disappointment of gun-control activists, particularly after moments of tragedy, running up against the very real place of guns in American society may sound familiar.

What are the most important things the law changed?

It banned interstate shipments of firearms and ammunition to private individuals [and] sales of guns to minors, drug addicts and “mental incompetents.” This is the first time you have in law that mentally unbalanced people ought not to be able to get gun also convicted felons. It also strengthened the licensing and record-keeping requirements for gun dealers, and that was significant because gun dealers were subject to virtually no systematic scrutiny up until this time, although a 1938 federal law did establish a fee they paid to government to be a licensed dealer. It banned importation of foreign-made surplus firearms, except those The President of the NRA, who had testified before Congress about the bill had said [paraphrasing], ‘We’re not thrilled with this, but we can live with it. I think it’s reasonable.’ The fact that he would concede there’s any such thing as a reasonable gun control legislation that represented the prevailing point of view of NRA leadership at the time, from 1968 to the late 1970s. Portions of the ’68 law were modified by a law passed by Congress in 1986, the Firearms Owners Protections Act, which sought to repeal even more of the law. It didn’t succeed, but the 1986 law does repeal or modify or blunt some of the aspects of the ’68 law. [It does that] by amending the ’68 law to allow for the interstate sale of rifles and shotguns as long as it was legal in the states of the buyer and seller, eliminating certain record-keeping requirements for ammunition dealers, and making it easier for individuals selling guns to do so without a license. The 1986 federal law was the culmination of the effort to try to roll back the 1968 law. The gun issue hadn’t been politicized in the ’60s the way it has been in the last few decades, where it has become even more angry and strident; 1968 was a year of political assassinations that shocked the nation. One of the great myths is the idea that gun-control laws are an artefact of the modern era, the 20th century. Gun laws are as old as America, literally to the very early colonial beginnings of the nation. From the beginning of the late 1600s to the end of the 1800s, gun laws were everywhere, thousands of gun laws of every imaginable variety. You find virtually every state in the union enacting laws that bar people from carrying concealed weapons. That’s something people don’t realize. The GCA is the main federal law that governs the interstate commerce of firearms in the United States. Specifically, the GCA prohibits firearms commerce across state lines except between licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. Under the GCA, any individual or company that wants to partake in commercial activity dealing with the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms must possess a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Procedural jargon notwithstanding, the enactment of 1968 GCA was a watershed moment in US politics. It was the first piece of legislation that put the gun control debate on the map.

Political Context of the GCA

It should be noted that the GCA was not the first piece of gun control passed at the federal level. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act of 1934 into law. The first comprehensive gun law at the federal level, the NFA taxed and mandated registration of certain firearms such as machine guns, sawed-off rifles, and sawed-off shotguns. This law was passed under the pretext of addressing mob-style violence during Prohibition, but a careful review of the New Deal era shows how the NFA was just another piece of FDR’s unprecedented social engineering program. This NFA was followed up by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which created a precursor to the 1968 GCA’s FFL system. Despite the government’s encroachments on gun rights, the federal government stayed away from further regulation for the next three decades. The passage of the GCA wasn’t without its fair share of opposition. Groups like the National Rifle Association, which traditionally focused on conservation and outdoor niches, were compelled to take nominally pro-gun stances. However, the NRA wasn’t alone. Groups like Gun Owners of America came into the spotlight, positioning themselves as a “no compromise” alternative to NRA. By the early 1980s, pro-gun lobbies would become pivotal actors in the never-ending circus of DC politics.

deas are Still Key

As the days go by, gun rights appear to be gradually falling down the path of statist micromanagement. But there’s something more fundamental to this trend than the cliché aphorism of eternal vigilance and conventional strategies of political activism. It really comes down to the battle of ideas. The GCA is a child of the New Deal and Great Society mindset that views the government as an omnipotent administrator of human affairs. A paradigm shift in ideas is needed to break free from this top-down vision of society. Until then, gun lobbies face an uphill battle. A solid first step is for gun owners to recognize that infringements like the GCA of 1968 must never be tolerated by anyone who believes in the right to self-defense. After three decades of quiescence in the arena of gun control politics, the turmoil of the 1960s unleashed a wave of demand for new gun control legislation. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, prompted the country to focus on the regulation of firearms. Then the urban riots beginning in 1964 and the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy fueled an inferno of outrage that demanded congressional action. In the wake of these acts of violence the U.S. Congress enacted the Gun Control Act which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1968. Although the Gun Control Act did not contain the owner licensing and gun registration provisions that President Johnson desired, the act, along with the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act passed by Congress months earlier, contained the most significant restrictions on firearms since Congress enacted the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION IN THE 1960s

A highly controversial bill that precipitated emotional debate and ferocious political battles, the Gun Control Act travelled quite a convoluted path prior to its ultimate approval by Congress. It started down its torturous road in 1963 when Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, championed legislation geared specifically at tightening restrictions on the sale of mail-order handguns. After President Kennedy was murdered with a military-style rifle obtained through the mail, Senator Dodd extended the reach of the legislation to include “long guns,” including rifles and shotguns. The legislation met an early demise when it was held up in the Commerce Committee and not allowed out for a vote on the Senate floor. Interestingly, the National Rifle Association (NRA) leaders initially supported the measures and even engaged in drafting Dodd’s bill. Yet the NRA leadership did not wish to alienate its more radical rank and file, so they neglected to divulge this to their members. Instead, in a letter to each of its affiliates, the NRA claimed its executive vice-president testified against the bill and prevented it from being voted out of Committee.

The NRA publication The Rifleman criticized the bill as a product of “irrational emotionalism,” and the first four issues of The Rifleman in 1964 dedicated more than thirty columns to firearms legislation, never telling its members of the NRA leadership’s support of the bill. These publications provoked the grass roots members to send off a great number of angry letters opposing the bill to Congress. In 1965 President Johnson aggressively endorsed the cause of fighting crime and regulating firearms by spearheading a new, strict gun control measure that Dodd introduced in the Senate. But the Johnson administration’s proposal suffered a string of defeats over the next three years because of heavy pressure from the NRA, key congressional leaders who supported them, the American Legion, and gun importers, manufacturers, and dealers. Adding to the administration’s difficulties was the lack of an organized pro–gun control lobby to check the relentless onslaughts against the legislation by the NRA. In 1968 President Johnson and his administration intensified their efforts. Johnson began using the bully pulpit of the presidency to chide Congress publicly to enact his gun control policy. In his 1968 State of the Union address, Johnson exhorted Congress to pass a gun control law that would stop “mail order murder.” And months later, President Johnson conveyed to Congress, in no uncertain terms, his desire for crime legislation that required national registration of every gun in America and licenses for all gun owners. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate responded to the president’s admonishment in short order. Congressional representatives carefully, and often vociferously, argued about the provisions of the president’s crime legislation. The measure, titled the Safe Streets and Crime Control Bill, received stiff resistance from gun control opponents.

NRA OPPOSITION TO THE ACT

By 1968 the leadership of the NRA was fully against any and all gun regulations. The group undertook a mass-mailing lobbying effort to undermine the legislation. Their organized lobbying efforts proved successful in wiping out much of the support for gun licensing and registration restrictions. Congress eventually enacted the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, a watered-down version of the Johnson administration’s anticrime and gun control proposal. The act prohibited the interstate shipment of pistols and revolvers to individuals, but it specifically exempted rifles and shotguns from any regulations. With the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the groundswell of support for tough gun control laws reached unprecedented levels. On June 6, the day after the Kennedy assassination, Johnson signed the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, but lamented the law’s weak provisions. President Johnson, who had proposed gun control measures every year since becoming president, appeared on national television imploring Congress to pass a new and tougher gun control law that banned mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition. Reading a letter he sent to Congress, Johnson pleaded to Congress “in the name of sanity… in the name of safety and in the name of an aroused nation to give America the gun-control law it needs.” On June 24, President Johnson again addressed the country, calling for mandatory national gun registration and licenses for every gun owner. Around this time, polls showed that approximately 80 percent of Americans favoured gun registration laws. The public flooded members of Congress with letters demanding greater regulation of guns. Protestors picketed the Washington headquarters of the NRA. Even many members of Congress who had been staunch adversaries of strict firearms regulation crossed over to the other side and rallied in favour of a tough gun control bill.

ORGANIZED GUN CONTROL EFFORTS

Pro–gun control advocates mobilized and constructed an effective pro–gun control pressure group called the Emergency Committee for Gun Control. The bipartisan organization was headed by Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., a former astronaut and friend of Senator Robert Kennedy. The Committee, comprising volunteer staffers who had worked for Senator Kennedy before he was assassinated, received extensive support from a variety of organizations such as the American Bankers Association, the AFL-CIO, the Conference of Mayors, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Attorneys General, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Riding a wave of support, the Committee sought to counteract the highly organized and resource-laden NRA. Their efforts proved somewhat effective, but ultimately fell short of the group’s goal of a comprehensive scheme of gun registration and gun owner licensing. Facing this unprecedented, widespread push for gun control, the NRA became highly energized and rallied against the president’s proposed regulations. National Rifle Association executive vice-president Franklin L. Orth argued publicly that no law, existing or proposed, could have prevented the murder of Senator Kennedy. On June 15, 1968, the NRA mailed a letter to its members calling for them to write their members of Congress to oppose any new firearms laws. Using hyperbole and emotionally charged rhetoric, NRA President Harold W. Glassen wrote that the right of sportsmen to obtain, own, and use firearms for a legal purpose was in grave jeopardy. Furthermore, Glassen wrote, the clear goal of gun control proponents was complete abolition of civilian ownership of guns. Senator Joseph D. Tydings, Democrat of Maryland, who had introduced the provisions requiring licensing of gun owners and registration of firearms, responded to this accusation in a press conference calling the letter “calculated hysteria” and saying no bill would prevent law-abiding citizens from having guns. Nevertheless, Glassen’s tactic effectively energized the membership of the NRA, then 900,000 strong, just as the public outcry calling for more firearms regulations was dissipating. Whereas Congress had encountered overwhelming support for more gun control measures in the week after Senator Kennedy’s death, by late June and early July they reported the majority of the letters from constituents indicated opposition to any new gun control provisions. The battle over the president’s proposals continued in the halls of Congress in typical fashion, featuring emotionally charged debates and supporters split along specific demographic and ideological lines. In the House, opponents argued against a registration provision claiming it would be costly and ineffective in preventing crime. In the Senate, Dodd attacked the NRA, decrying its tactics of “blackmail, intimidation and unscrupulous propaganda.” The licensing and registration provisions, backed solidly by northern liberals, were easily defeated in both the House of Representatives and Senate by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. However, the provisions banning mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition fared better, passing both the House and Senate. Eastern and Midwestern members of Congress overwhelmingly supported these measures, while those from the South and West were much less supportive. Members of Congress representing urban areas staunchly supported the bill, whereas those from rural sections of the country voted against it in significant numbers.

PROVISIONS OF THE GUN CONTROL ACT

On October 22, President Johnson signed into law the Gun Control Act of 1968—an instrument which, just months earlier, was considered a lost cause because of staunch opposition. The signing of the legislation represented a significant political win for the president, Senator Dodd, and other gun control advocates who had struggled for years to pass a gun control bill that would effect real change. Enacted pursuant to the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, the legislation had three major features. First, it prohibited interstate traffic in firearms and ammunition. Second, it denied guns to specific classes of individuals such as felons, minors, fugitives, drug addicts, and the mentally ill. Third, it prohibited the importation of surplus military weapons into the United States as well as guns and ammunition not federally certified as sporting weapons or souvenirs. As is usually the case in American politics, the statute did not signify a complete victory for either side. Advocates of gun control failed to get provisions requiring owner licensing and firearms registration, yet gun control opponents, typically NRA members, suffered another setback to their goal of removing governmental regulation of firearms. This partial defeat for the NRA served as the group’s wake-up call, energizing and expanding the membership of the NRA who suddenly felt politically vulnerable. Yet unlike the NRA, the pro–gun control advocates were not organized for long-term pressure politics, and their political influence began to wane. Thus in 1986 the NRA successfully weakened the provisions of the 1968 act by spearheading the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act.

Utah Gun Lawyer Free Consultation

When you need legal help from a Gun Attorney in Utah, please call Ascent Law LLC for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Self Defense In Utah

Will A Chapter 13 Plan Look Better On My Credit Report Than Chapter 7?

Why Draining Your Retirement To Save A Doomed House From Foreclosure Before Filing Bankruptcy Is A Mistake

The Cook Islands Trust

Business Structure

Local Probate Lawyer

from Michael Anderson https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/gun-control-act-of-1968/

[asafeatherwould]

Gun Control Act Of 1968

This Legislation regulated interstate and foreign commerce in firearms, including importation, “prohibited persons”, and licensing provisions. After the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Gun Control Act is passed and imposes stricter licensing and regulation on the firearms industry, establishes new categories of firearms offenses, and prohibits the sale of firearms and ammunition to felons and certain other prohibited persons. It also imposes the first Federal jurisdiction over “destructive devices,” including bombs, mines, grenades and other similar devices. Congress reorganizes ATU into the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD) and delegates to them the enforcement of the Gun Control Act. “Forget the democratic processes, the judicial system and the talent for organization that have long been the distinctive marks of the U.S. Forget, too, the affluence (vast, if still not general enough) and the fundamental respect for law by most Americans. From the nation’s beginnings, in fact and fiction, the gun has been provider and protector.” Though the 1968 law was a victory of sorts for gun-control activists, many were disappointed it didn’t include a registry of firearms or federal licensing requirements for gun owners. TIME reported, “It may take another act of horror to push really effective gun curbs through Congress.” Those dynamics the disappointment of gun-control activists, particularly after moments of tragedy, running up against the very real place of guns in American society may sound familiar.

What are the most important things the law changed?

It banned interstate shipments of firearms and ammunition to private individuals [and] sales of guns to minors, drug addicts and “mental incompetents.” This is the first time you have in law that mentally unbalanced people ought not to be able to get gun also convicted felons. It also strengthened the licensing and record-keeping requirements for gun dealers, and that was significant because gun dealers were subject to virtually no systematic scrutiny up until this time, although a 1938 federal law did establish a fee they paid to government to be a licensed dealer. It banned importation of foreign-made surplus firearms, except those The President of the NRA, who had testified before Congress about the bill had said [paraphrasing], ‘We’re not thrilled with this, but we can live with it. I think it’s reasonable.’ The fact that he would concede there’s any such thing as a reasonable gun control legislation that represented the prevailing point of view of NRA leadership at the time, from 1968 to the late 1970s. Portions of the ’68 law were modified by a law passed by Congress in 1986, the Firearms Owners Protections Act, which sought to repeal even more of the law. It didn’t succeed, but the 1986 law does repeal or modify or blunt some of the aspects of the ’68 law. [It does that] by amending the ’68 law to allow for the interstate sale of rifles and shotguns as long as it was legal in the states of the buyer and seller, eliminating certain record-keeping requirements for ammunition dealers, and making it easier for individuals selling guns to do so without a license. The 1986 federal law was the culmination of the effort to try to roll back the 1968 law. The gun issue hadn’t been politicized in the ’60s the way it has been in the last few decades, where it has become even more angry and strident; 1968 was a year of political assassinations that shocked the nation. One of the great myths is the idea that gun-control laws are an artefact of the modern era, the 20th century. Gun laws are as old as America, literally to the very early colonial beginnings of the nation. From the beginning of the late 1600s to the end of the 1800s, gun laws were everywhere, thousands of gun laws of every imaginable variety. You find virtually every state in the union enacting laws that bar people from carrying concealed weapons. That’s something people don’t realize. The GCA is the main federal law that governs the interstate commerce of firearms in the United States. Specifically, the GCA prohibits firearms commerce across state lines except between licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. Under the GCA, any individual or company that wants to partake in commercial activity dealing with the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms must possess a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Procedural jargon notwithstanding, the enactment of 1968 GCA was a watershed moment in US politics. It was the first piece of legislation that put the gun control debate on the map.

Political Context of the GCA

It should be noted that the GCA was not the first piece of gun control passed at the federal level. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act of 1934 into law. The first comprehensive gun law at the federal level, the NFA taxed and mandated registration of certain firearms such as machine guns, sawed-off rifles, and sawed-off shotguns. This law was passed under the pretext of addressing mob-style violence during Prohibition, but a careful review of the New Deal era shows how the NFA was just another piece of FDR’s unprecedented social engineering program. This NFA was followed up by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which created a precursor to the 1968 GCA’s FFL system. Despite the government’s encroachments on gun rights, the federal government stayed away from further regulation for the next three decades. The passage of the GCA wasn’t without its fair share of opposition. Groups like the National Rifle Association, which traditionally focused on conservation and outdoor niches, were compelled to take nominally pro-gun stances. However, the NRA wasn’t alone. Groups like Gun Owners of America came into the spotlight, positioning themselves as a “no compromise” alternative to NRA. By the early 1980s, pro-gun lobbies would become pivotal actors in the never-ending circus of DC politics.

deas are Still Key

As the days go by, gun rights appear to be gradually falling down the path of statist micromanagement. But there’s something more fundamental to this trend than the cliché aphorism of eternal vigilance and conventional strategies of political activism. It really comes down to the battle of ideas. The GCA is a child of the New Deal and Great Society mindset that views the government as an omnipotent administrator of human affairs. A paradigm shift in ideas is needed to break free from this top-down vision of society. Until then, gun lobbies face an uphill battle. A solid first step is for gun owners to recognize that infringements like the GCA of 1968 must never be tolerated by anyone who believes in the right to self-defense. After three decades of quiescence in the arena of gun control politics, the turmoil of the 1960s unleashed a wave of demand for new gun control legislation. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, prompted the country to focus on the regulation of firearms. Then the urban riots beginning in 1964 and the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy fueled an inferno of outrage that demanded congressional action. In the wake of these acts of violence the U.S. Congress enacted the Gun Control Act which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1968. Although the Gun Control Act did not contain the owner licensing and gun registration provisions that President Johnson desired, the act, along with the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act passed by Congress months earlier, contained the most significant restrictions on firearms since Congress enacted the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION IN THE 1960s

A highly controversial bill that precipitated emotional debate and ferocious political battles, the Gun Control Act travelled quite a convoluted path prior to its ultimate approval by Congress. It started down its torturous road in 1963 when Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, championed legislation geared specifically at tightening restrictions on the sale of mail-order handguns. After President Kennedy was murdered with a military-style rifle obtained through the mail, Senator Dodd extended the reach of the legislation to include “long guns,” including rifles and shotguns. The legislation met an early demise when it was held up in the Commerce Committee and not allowed out for a vote on the Senate floor. Interestingly, the National Rifle Association (NRA) leaders initially supported the measures and even engaged in drafting Dodd’s bill. Yet the NRA leadership did not wish to alienate its more radical rank and file, so they neglected to divulge this to their members. Instead, in a letter to each of its affiliates, the NRA claimed its executive vice-president testified against the bill and prevented it from being voted out of Committee.

The NRA publication The Rifleman criticized the bill as a product of “irrational emotionalism,” and the first four issues of The Rifleman in 1964 dedicated more than thirty columns to firearms legislation, never telling its members of the NRA leadership’s support of the bill. These publications provoked the grass roots members to send off a great number of angry letters opposing the bill to Congress. In 1965 President Johnson aggressively endorsed the cause of fighting crime and regulating firearms by spearheading a new, strict gun control measure that Dodd introduced in the Senate. But the Johnson administration’s proposal suffered a string of defeats over the next three years because of heavy pressure from the NRA, key congressional leaders who supported them, the American Legion, and gun importers, manufacturers, and dealers. Adding to the administration’s difficulties was the lack of an organized pro–gun control lobby to check the relentless onslaughts against the legislation by the NRA. In 1968 President Johnson and his administration intensified their efforts. Johnson began using the bully pulpit of the presidency to chide Congress publicly to enact his gun control policy. In his 1968 State of the Union address, Johnson exhorted Congress to pass a gun control law that would stop “mail order murder.” And months later, President Johnson conveyed to Congress, in no uncertain terms, his desire for crime legislation that required national registration of every gun in America and licenses for all gun owners. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate responded to the president’s admonishment in short order. Congressional representatives carefully, and often vociferously, argued about the provisions of the president’s crime legislation. The measure, titled the Safe Streets and Crime Control Bill, received stiff resistance from gun control opponents.

NRA OPPOSITION TO THE ACT

By 1968 the leadership of the NRA was fully against any and all gun regulations. The group undertook a mass-mailing lobbying effort to undermine the legislation. Their organized lobbying efforts proved successful in wiping out much of the support for gun licensing and registration restrictions. Congress eventually enacted the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, a watered-down version of the Johnson administration’s anticrime and gun control proposal. The act prohibited the interstate shipment of pistols and revolvers to individuals, but it specifically exempted rifles and shotguns from any regulations. With the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the groundswell of support for tough gun control laws reached unprecedented levels. On June 6, the day after the Kennedy assassination, Johnson signed the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, but lamented the law’s weak provisions. President Johnson, who had proposed gun control measures every year since becoming president, appeared on national television imploring Congress to pass a new and tougher gun control law that banned mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition. Reading a letter he sent to Congress, Johnson pleaded to Congress “in the name of sanity… in the name of safety and in the name of an aroused nation to give America the gun-control law it needs.” On June 24, President Johnson again addressed the country, calling for mandatory national gun registration and licenses for every gun owner. Around this time, polls showed that approximately 80 percent of Americans favoured gun registration laws. The public flooded members of Congress with letters demanding greater regulation of guns. Protestors picketed the Washington headquarters of the NRA. Even many members of Congress who had been staunch adversaries of strict firearms regulation crossed over to the other side and rallied in favour of a tough gun control bill.

ORGANIZED GUN CONTROL EFFORTS

Pro–gun control advocates mobilized and constructed an effective pro–gun control pressure group called the Emergency Committee for Gun Control. The bipartisan organization was headed by Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., a former astronaut and friend of Senator Robert Kennedy. The Committee, comprising volunteer staffers who had worked for Senator Kennedy before he was assassinated, received extensive support from a variety of organizations such as the American Bankers Association, the AFL-CIO, the Conference of Mayors, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Attorneys General, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Riding a wave of support, the Committee sought to counteract the highly organized and resource-laden NRA. Their efforts proved somewhat effective, but ultimately fell short of the group’s goal of a comprehensive scheme of gun registration and gun owner licensing. Facing this unprecedented, widespread push for gun control, the NRA became highly energized and rallied against the president’s proposed regulations. National Rifle Association executive vice-president Franklin L. Orth argued publicly that no law, existing or proposed, could have prevented the murder of Senator Kennedy. On June 15, 1968, the NRA mailed a letter to its members calling for them to write their members of Congress to oppose any new firearms laws. Using hyperbole and emotionally charged rhetoric, NRA President Harold W. Glassen wrote that the right of sportsmen to obtain, own, and use firearms for a legal purpose was in grave jeopardy. Furthermore, Glassen wrote, the clear goal of gun control proponents was complete abolition of civilian ownership of guns. Senator Joseph D. Tydings, Democrat of Maryland, who had introduced the provisions requiring licensing of gun owners and registration of firearms, responded to this accusation in a press conference calling the letter “calculated hysteria” and saying no bill would prevent law-abiding citizens from having guns. Nevertheless, Glassen’s tactic effectively energized the membership of the NRA, then 900,000 strong, just as the public outcry calling for more firearms regulations was dissipating. Whereas Congress had encountered overwhelming support for more gun control measures in the week after Senator Kennedy’s death, by late June and early July they reported the majority of the letters from constituents indicated opposition to any new gun control provisions. The battle over the president’s proposals continued in the halls of Congress in typical fashion, featuring emotionally charged debates and supporters split along specific demographic and ideological lines. In the House, opponents argued against a registration provision claiming it would be costly and ineffective in preventing crime. In the Senate, Dodd attacked the NRA, decrying its tactics of “blackmail, intimidation and unscrupulous propaganda.” The licensing and registration provisions, backed solidly by northern liberals, were easily defeated in both the House of Representatives and Senate by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. However, the provisions banning mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition fared better, passing both the House and Senate. Eastern and Midwestern members of Congress overwhelmingly supported these measures, while those from the South and West were much less supportive. Members of Congress representing urban areas staunchly supported the bill, whereas those from rural sections of the country voted against it in significant numbers.

PROVISIONS OF THE GUN CONTROL ACT

On October 22, President Johnson signed into law the Gun Control Act of 1968—an instrument which, just months earlier, was considered a lost cause because of staunch opposition. The signing of the legislation represented a significant political win for the president, Senator Dodd, and other gun control advocates who had struggled for years to pass a gun control bill that would effect real change. Enacted pursuant to the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, the legislation had three major features. First, it prohibited interstate traffic in firearms and ammunition. Second, it denied guns to specific classes of individuals such as felons, minors, fugitives, drug addicts, and the mentally ill. Third, it prohibited the importation of surplus military weapons into the United States as well as guns and ammunition not federally certified as sporting weapons or souvenirs. As is usually the case in American politics, the statute did not signify a complete victory for either side. Advocates of gun control failed to get provisions requiring owner licensing and firearms registration, yet gun control opponents, typically NRA members, suffered another setback to their goal of removing governmental regulation of firearms. This partial defeat for the NRA served as the group’s wake-up call, energizing and expanding the membership of the NRA who suddenly felt politically vulnerable. Yet unlike the NRA, the pro–gun control advocates were not organized for long-term pressure politics, and their political influence began to wane. Thus in 1986 the NRA successfully weakened the provisions of the 1968 act by spearheading the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act.

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Source: https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/gun-control-act-of-1968/

[michaeljames1221]

Gun Control Act Of 1968

This Legislation regulated interstate and foreign commerce in firearms, including importation, “prohibited persons”, and licensing provisions. After the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Gun Control Act is passed and imposes stricter licensing and regulation on the firearms industry, establishes new categories of firearms offenses, and prohibits the sale of firearms and ammunition to felons and certain other prohibited persons. It also imposes the first Federal jurisdiction over “destructive devices,” including bombs, mines, grenades and other similar devices. Congress reorganizes ATU into the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD) and delegates to them the enforcement of the Gun Control Act. “Forget the democratic processes, the judicial system and the talent for organization that have long been the distinctive marks of the U.S. Forget, too, the affluence (vast, if still not general enough) and the fundamental respect for law by most Americans. From the nation’s beginnings, in fact and fiction, the gun has been provider and protector.” Though the 1968 law was a victory of sorts for gun-control activists, many were disappointed it didn’t include a registry of firearms or federal licensing requirements for gun owners. TIME reported, “It may take another act of horror to push really effective gun curbs through Congress.” Those dynamics the disappointment of gun-control activists, particularly after moments of tragedy, running up against the very real place of guns in American society may sound familiar.

What are the most important things the law changed?

It banned interstate shipments of firearms and ammunition to private individuals [and] sales of guns to minors, drug addicts and “mental incompetents.” This is the first time you have in law that mentally unbalanced people ought not to be able to get gun also convicted felons. It also strengthened the licensing and record-keeping requirements for gun dealers, and that was significant because gun dealers were subject to virtually no systematic scrutiny up until this time, although a 1938 federal law did establish a fee they paid to government to be a licensed dealer. It banned importation of foreign-made surplus firearms, except those The President of the NRA, who had testified before Congress about the bill had said [paraphrasing], ‘We’re not thrilled with this, but we can live with it. I think it’s reasonable.’ The fact that he would concede there’s any such thing as a reasonable gun control legislation that represented the prevailing point of view of NRA leadership at the time, from 1968 to the late 1970s. Portions of the ’68 law were modified by a law passed by Congress in 1986, the Firearms Owners Protections Act, which sought to repeal even more of the law. It didn’t succeed, but the 1986 law does repeal or modify or blunt some of the aspects of the ’68 law. [It does that] by amending the ’68 law to allow for the interstate sale of rifles and shotguns as long as it was legal in the states of the buyer and seller, eliminating certain record-keeping requirements for ammunition dealers, and making it easier for individuals selling guns to do so without a license. The 1986 federal law was the culmination of the effort to try to roll back the 1968 law. The gun issue hadn’t been politicized in the ’60s the way it has been in the last few decades, where it has become even more angry and strident; 1968 was a year of political assassinations that shocked the nation. One of the great myths is the idea that gun-control laws are an artefact of the modern era, the 20th century. Gun laws are as old as America, literally to the very early colonial beginnings of the nation. From the beginning of the late 1600s to the end of the 1800s, gun laws were everywhere, thousands of gun laws of every imaginable variety. You find virtually every state in the union enacting laws that bar people from carrying concealed weapons. That’s something people don’t realize. The GCA is the main federal law that governs the interstate commerce of firearms in the United States. Specifically, the GCA prohibits firearms commerce across state lines except between licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. Under the GCA, any individual or company that wants to partake in commercial activity dealing with the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms must possess a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Procedural jargon notwithstanding, the enactment of 1968 GCA was a watershed moment in US politics. It was the first piece of legislation that put the gun control debate on the map.

Political Context of the GCA

It should be noted that the GCA was not the first piece of gun control passed at the federal level. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act of 1934 into law. The first comprehensive gun law at the federal level, the NFA taxed and mandated registration of certain firearms such as machine guns, sawed-off rifles, and sawed-off shotguns. This law was passed under the pretext of addressing mob-style violence during Prohibition, but a careful review of the New Deal era shows how the NFA was just another piece of FDR’s unprecedented social engineering program. This NFA was followed up by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which created a precursor to the 1968 GCA’s FFL system. Despite the government’s encroachments on gun rights, the federal government stayed away from further regulation for the next three decades. The passage of the GCA wasn’t without its fair share of opposition. Groups like the National Rifle Association, which traditionally focused on conservation and outdoor niches, were compelled to take nominally pro-gun stances. However, the NRA wasn’t alone. Groups like Gun Owners of America came into the spotlight, positioning themselves as a “no compromise” alternative to NRA. By the early 1980s, pro-gun lobbies would become pivotal actors in the never-ending circus of DC politics.

deas are Still Key

As the days go by, gun rights appear to be gradually falling down the path of statist micromanagement. But there’s something more fundamental to this trend than the cliché aphorism of eternal vigilance and conventional strategies of political activism. It really comes down to the battle of ideas. The GCA is a child of the New Deal and Great Society mindset that views the government as an omnipotent administrator of human affairs. A paradigm shift in ideas is needed to break free from this top-down vision of society. Until then, gun lobbies face an uphill battle. A solid first step is for gun owners to recognize that infringements like the GCA of 1968 must never be tolerated by anyone who believes in the right to self-defense. After three decades of quiescence in the arena of gun control politics, the turmoil of the 1960s unleashed a wave of demand for new gun control legislation. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, prompted the country to focus on the regulation of firearms. Then the urban riots beginning in 1964 and the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy fueled an inferno of outrage that demanded congressional action. In the wake of these acts of violence the U.S. Congress enacted the Gun Control Act which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1968. Although the Gun Control Act did not contain the owner licensing and gun registration provisions that President Johnson desired, the act, along with the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act passed by Congress months earlier, contained the most significant restrictions on firearms since Congress enacted the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION IN THE 1960s

A highly controversial bill that precipitated emotional debate and ferocious political battles, the Gun Control Act travelled quite a convoluted path prior to its ultimate approval by Congress. It started down its torturous road in 1963 when Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, championed legislation geared specifically at tightening restrictions on the sale of mail-order handguns. After President Kennedy was murdered with a military-style rifle obtained through the mail, Senator Dodd extended the reach of the legislation to include “long guns,” including rifles and shotguns. The legislation met an early demise when it was held up in the Commerce Committee and not allowed out for a vote on the Senate floor. Interestingly, the National Rifle Association (NRA) leaders initially supported the measures and even engaged in drafting Dodd’s bill. Yet the NRA leadership did not wish to alienate its more radical rank and file, so they neglected to divulge this to their members. Instead, in a letter to each of its affiliates, the NRA claimed its executive vice-president testified against the bill and prevented it from being voted out of Committee.

The NRA publication The Rifleman criticized the bill as a product of “irrational emotionalism,” and the first four issues of The Rifleman in 1964 dedicated more than thirty columns to firearms legislation, never telling its members of the NRA leadership’s support of the bill. These publications provoked the grass roots members to send off a great number of angry letters opposing the bill to Congress. In 1965 President Johnson aggressively endorsed the cause of fighting crime and regulating firearms by spearheading a new, strict gun control measure that Dodd introduced in the Senate. But the Johnson administration’s proposal suffered a string of defeats over the next three years because of heavy pressure from the NRA, key congressional leaders who supported them, the American Legion, and gun importers, manufacturers, and dealers. Adding to the administration’s difficulties was the lack of an organized pro–gun control lobby to check the relentless onslaughts against the legislation by the NRA. In 1968 President Johnson and his administration intensified their efforts. Johnson began using the bully pulpit of the presidency to chide Congress publicly to enact his gun control policy. In his 1968 State of the Union address, Johnson exhorted Congress to pass a gun control law that would stop “mail order murder.” And months later, President Johnson conveyed to Congress, in no uncertain terms, his desire for crime legislation that required national registration of every gun in America and licenses for all gun owners. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate responded to the president’s admonishment in short order. Congressional representatives carefully, and often vociferously, argued about the provisions of the president’s crime legislation. The measure, titled the Safe Streets and Crime Control Bill, received stiff resistance from gun control opponents.

NRA OPPOSITION TO THE ACT

By 1968 the leadership of the NRA was fully against any and all gun regulations. The group undertook a mass-mailing lobbying effort to undermine the legislation. Their organized lobbying efforts proved successful in wiping out much of the support for gun licensing and registration restrictions. Congress eventually enacted the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, a watered-down version of the Johnson administration’s anticrime and gun control proposal. The act prohibited the interstate shipment of pistols and revolvers to individuals, but it specifically exempted rifles and shotguns from any regulations. With the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the groundswell of support for tough gun control laws reached unprecedented levels. On June 6, the day after the Kennedy assassination, Johnson signed the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act, but lamented the law’s weak provisions. President Johnson, who had proposed gun control measures every year since becoming president, appeared on national television imploring Congress to pass a new and tougher gun control law that banned mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition. Reading a letter he sent to Congress, Johnson pleaded to Congress “in the name of sanity… in the name of safety and in the name of an aroused nation to give America the gun-control law it needs.” On June 24, President Johnson again addressed the country, calling for mandatory national gun registration and licenses for every gun owner. Around this time, polls showed that approximately 80 percent of Americans favoured gun registration laws. The public flooded members of Congress with letters demanding greater regulation of guns. Protestors picketed the Washington headquarters of the NRA. Even many members of Congress who had been staunch adversaries of strict firearms regulation crossed over to the other side and rallied in favour of a tough gun control bill.

ORGANIZED GUN CONTROL EFFORTS

Pro–gun control advocates mobilized and constructed an effective pro–gun control pressure group called the Emergency Committee for Gun Control. The bipartisan organization was headed by Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., a former astronaut and friend of Senator Robert Kennedy. The Committee, comprising volunteer staffers who had worked for Senator Kennedy before he was assassinated, received extensive support from a variety of organizations such as the American Bankers Association, the AFL-CIO, the Conference of Mayors, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Attorneys General, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Riding a wave of support, the Committee sought to counteract the highly organized and resource-laden NRA. Their efforts proved somewhat effective, but ultimately fell short of the group’s goal of a comprehensive scheme of gun registration and gun owner licensing. Facing this unprecedented, widespread push for gun control, the NRA became highly energized and rallied against the president’s proposed regulations. National Rifle Association executive vice-president Franklin L. Orth argued publicly that no law, existing or proposed, could have prevented the murder of Senator Kennedy. On June 15, 1968, the NRA mailed a letter to its members calling for them to write their members of Congress to oppose any new firearms laws. Using hyperbole and emotionally charged rhetoric, NRA President Harold W. Glassen wrote that the right of sportsmen to obtain, own, and use firearms for a legal purpose was in grave jeopardy. Furthermore, Glassen wrote, the clear goal of gun control proponents was complete abolition of civilian ownership of guns. Senator Joseph D. Tydings, Democrat of Maryland, who had introduced the provisions requiring licensing of gun owners and registration of firearms, responded to this accusation in a press conference calling the letter “calculated hysteria” and saying no bill would prevent law-abiding citizens from having guns. Nevertheless, Glassen’s tactic effectively energized the membership of the NRA, then 900,000 strong, just as the public outcry calling for more firearms regulations was dissipating. Whereas Congress had encountered overwhelming support for more gun control measures in the week after Senator Kennedy’s death, by late June and early July they reported the majority of the letters from constituents indicated opposition to any new gun control provisions. The battle over the president’s proposals continued in the halls of Congress in typical fashion, featuring emotionally charged debates and supporters split along specific demographic and ideological lines. In the House, opponents argued against a registration provision claiming it would be costly and ineffective in preventing crime. In the Senate, Dodd attacked the NRA, decrying its tactics of “blackmail, intimidation and unscrupulous propaganda.” The licensing and registration provisions, backed solidly by northern liberals, were easily defeated in both the House of Representatives and Senate by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. However, the provisions banning mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition fared better, passing both the House and Senate. Eastern and Midwestern members of Congress overwhelmingly supported these measures, while those from the South and West were much less supportive. Members of Congress representing urban areas staunchly supported the bill, whereas those from rural sections of the country voted against it in significant numbers.

PROVISIONS OF THE GUN CONTROL ACT

On October 22, President Johnson signed into law the Gun Control Act of 1968—an instrument which, just months earlier, was considered a lost cause because of staunch opposition. The signing of the legislation represented a significant political win for the president, Senator Dodd, and other gun control advocates who had struggled for years to pass a gun control bill that would effect real change. Enacted pursuant to the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce, the legislation had three major features. First, it prohibited interstate traffic in firearms and ammunition. Second, it denied guns to specific classes of individuals such as felons, minors, fugitives, drug addicts, and the mentally ill. Third, it prohibited the importation of surplus military weapons into the United States as well as guns and ammunition not federally certified as sporting weapons or souvenirs. As is usually the case in American politics, the statute did not signify a complete victory for either side. Advocates of gun control failed to get provisions requiring owner licensing and firearms registration, yet gun control opponents, typically NRA members, suffered another setback to their goal of removing governmental regulation of firearms. This partial defeat for the NRA served as the group’s wake-up call, energizing and expanding the membership of the NRA who suddenly felt politically vulnerable. Yet unlike the NRA, the pro–gun control advocates were not organized for long-term pressure politics, and their political influence began to wane. Thus in 1986 the NRA successfully weakened the provisions of the 1968 act by spearheading the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act.

Utah Gun Lawyer Free Consultation

When you need legal help from a Gun Attorney in Utah, please call Ascent Law LLC for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

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from Michael Anderson https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/gun-control-act-of-1968/

from Criminal Defense Lawyer West Jordan Utah https://criminaldefenselawyerwestjordanutah.wordpress.com/2020/06/01/gun-control-act-of-1968/

[yesweweresoldiers]

Role-Playing the Progressives of 1912: John Moser’s new Reacting to the Past Game

Professor John Moser is well known in the MAHG program for using carefully designed role-playing games to teach historical events and periods. Moser has co-authored a number of gamebooks in the Reacting to the Past (RTTP) series. These games begin in a pivotal moment of history, when citizen groups contest for power or face critical decisions. Each player assumes the identity of one historical actor, taking on this person’s motives, core beliefs and goals. The game unfolds as players declare their positions and appeal for others’ support.

This summer, Professor Moser will teach the “Progressive Era” course using a Reacting to the Past game he is currently developing with the help of another history professor at Samford University. We asked him how the game will illuminate the Progressive era.

You call this game Progressivism at High Tide, since it takes place during the only presidential election in US history when all of the candidates called themselves progressives. Yet the “historical background” in the gamebook discusses a diversity of progressive views. How do you define Progressivism?

The difficulty of defining progressivism in practice actually inspired this game. I’d been reading Sid Milkis’s book, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party and the Transformation of American Democracy, and realizing that it’s one thing to talk about progressive ideas in theory and another to talk about transforming those ideas into a political agenda.

[caption id="attachment_38351" align="alignleft" width="407"] Professor John Moser[/caption]

The Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis divides scholars into “Lumpers” and “Splitters.” Lumpers point to commonalities; Splitters draw distinctions. From my perspective, the political theorists who have taught the Progressive Era in MAHG are very much lumpers. They ask, what do thinkers as different as Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Jane Addams believe in common? They answer: All these thinkers say that the republic established by the founders was designed for the conditions prevailing in the late 18th century. Now it must be revised to face the challenges of the modern world.

That’s a valid observation. But it glosses over some really huge differences. As a historian, I look at particular individuals, what they believed and did. The measures they proposed responded to galvanizing events. You should not be able to take the AHG 505 Progressive Era course without ever hearing mention of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire!

The question of big business divided the Progressive Party. Some, like Theodore Roosevelt, saw the trusts as an inevitable feature of the modern economy. They would allow the trusts to develop but regulate them in the public interest. Yet many of those who followed Roosevelt out of the Republican party in 1912 were dismayed by this language in the new Progressive Party platform. They agreed with President Taft, who saw US Steel violating the Sherman Antitrust Act and said, “the law is the law!”

Who was the real progressive? Taft, who thought US Steel a combination in restraint of trade and tried to break it up? Or Roosevelt, who would use the Sherman Antitrust Act strictly as a bludgeon, forcing those who act against the public interest to change?

Progressives disagreed on many other things. Some argued for civil rights laws or women’s suffrage; others opposed these reforms. Some supported labor unions and resented mandatory government mediation during strikes; others would improve labor conditions through government regulation.

I don’t see progressivism as one monolithic movement. But the differences between progressive factions can make you wonder if progressivism is even a meaningful term. This diversity leaves room for certain historians to define all the things that we like as progressive, and those we deplore as non-progressive. The truth is, some progressives pushed segregation and the disenfranchisement of blacks on what they saw as progressive grounds. They favored excluding the illiterate or ill-educated from the franchise. Prohibition is another instance. Some opposed it, but many favored it.

The progressive label is still used. How would you define progressivism today?

[caption id="attachment_38358" align="alignright" width="323"] Moser moderating the game "Kentucky, 1861: Loyalty, State and Nation"[/caption]

We say the Progressive Era ended around 1920, but by then they had fundamentally changed things. Still, certain social elements of what we call Progressivism today—the importance of personal liberation—only became important in the 1960s and 1970s.

In our last class sessions, after the game ends, we’ll discuss readings from recent history. In many ways, today’s progressives would look back on the progressives of the early 20th century and recoil. Early Progressives spoke of the need to move away from rights, toward duties; away from the interests of the individual toward those of the community. Today, much of the progressive social agenda supports the right of individuals to do pretty much as they please. Contrast that with Theodore Roosevelt. He comes out for women’s suffrage in an article that reminds women of their duty to bear and raise children.

For this game, have you selected many of the same documents you would use in previous seminars on the Progressive era?  

The core texts we use are all ones used in the past: Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” speech, Wilson’s “Authors and Signers of the Declaration of Independence.” These get to the question of what progressivism is. I added Eugene V. Debs’ acceptance speech, because Debs is a character in the game, and everyone needs to understand that for Debs, socialism is a form of progressivism.

The supplemental documents take up particular issues. All the characters in the game who are not candidates for president are advocating policies on particular issues. For example, the student who plays George Perkins (an ally of Teddy Roosevelt who was a partner at J. P. Morgan and on the board of US Steel) will rely on Perkins’ speech “The Modern Corporation.” The person playing Victor Berger, the first socialist elected to the US Congress, will be able to read Berger’s piece arguing trusts should be nationalized. The readings cover eight issues: direct democracy (should measures like primaries, recall elections, and ballot initiatives be instituted?); big business; immigration; women’s suffrage, racial equality; labor reforms; the tariff; and organized labor.

Each player makes a speech advocating a position on one of these issues. Hence, different players will specialize in different issues and in effect teach them to the rest of the class. Everyone will read every reading, but those focused on a problem will have to know the related reading really solidly.

What other overall lessons does this way of studying history teach?

It helps you understand the calculations politicians and activists must make. No one begins this game as the member of a faction. But players will be listening for presidential candidates to support their particular issues. They’ll endorse candidates who do. Then they are on those candidates’ teams, working to get them elected.

Take the example of racial equality. A candidate who thinks W. E. B. Dubois’s endorsement is important might come out in favor of enforcing voting rights in the South, desegregating the schools, or passing an anti-lynching law. But if the candidate thinks the support of white Southerners is more important, he will not make statements in favor of civil rights. This was a dilemma for Teddy Roosevelt—and for W. E. B. Du Bois, who heard no one supporting his issues. In the game, Du Bois must decide which candidate is least objectionable—or whether to endorse no one at all.

Certainly the game teaches the value of teamwork. This game in particular also emphasizes civility. As American elections go, this was a fairly tame one. The speeches in the course of the game will be more like Chautauquas, with speakers talking about what is near and dear to their hearts.

The game concludes in the election of 1912. Might the candidate who won in history lose in the game?

It’s almost guaranteed the Democrat’s going to win the election. But that person will not necessarily be Wilson.  When the game begins, the Republican Party has already split and Taft and Debs have already gotten their parties’ nominations. The first session covers both the Progressive Party and the Democratic Party conventions. Historically, the candidate favored to get the Democratic nomination was Champ Clark of Missouri. He had a majority on the first ballot, but not the 2/3 majority the party required. So there will be a lot of negotiation during the Democratic Party convention.

I’ve built into the game victory conditions so that Taft, Roosevelt and certainly Debs don’t have to be elected president in order to win the game; they just have to do better than they did historically. If Eugene V. Debs gets any electoral votes at all he wins the game, because historically, Debs’ 200,000 votes gave him no votes in the electoral college. Conversely, Wilson doesn’t win the game just by being elected; he needs to win by a wider margin than was historically the case.

I’ve always found students compete to win. While some professors using RTTP games award a small number of points toward the final grade to the students on the winning team, I’ve never felt I had to do that.

Since you’ve begun using RTTP in the MAHG program, have you heard of teachers using or adapting the games to their classrooms at home?

I know that that there are certain teachers who now use the games, and others who adapt portions of them. They might design a lesson in which teams debate a particular issue, or in which students write editorials advocating a position on an issue of the era.

Every time I use RTTP, teachers ask me, “How do I use this in my class?” I have to be a little careful, because the RTTP consortium does not officially recommend use of the game in high schools. They don’t discourage it either, but they have a very small staff who lack the time to answer teacher questions. When teachers tell me they plan to use a game, I give them pointers if they want them and say that they can contact me later.

The post Role-Playing the Progressives of 1912: John Moser’s new Reacting to the Past Game appeared first on Teaching American History.

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You do not have to spend a lot of time at the gym in order to get fit. However, in this article you will find some clever tips that will aid you in your efforts to get fit in a number of ways, not just at the gym. Not everyone has a lot of time that they can devote to exercise. Split your workout time into two halves. You are not adding to the amount of time for your workout; you are simply breaking it in half. If you cut your work out into half, do the first session early in the day and the second half in the evening. If you break your work out into 3 sessions, do the middle session near lunch time. If you'd prefer not to go to your gym more than once in a day, you can try doing one workout at your gym, and doing one workout outdoors. A person can maximize any benefits they get from exercise by varying their exercise activities. For instance, instead of doing all your workouts on your treadmill, take a walk around your neighborhood. The difference in intensity and muscle use that is needed to run uphill outdoors can yield different results than similar exercise on the indoor track. By adding variety to workouts, one can avoid the body becoming too accustomed to any given exercise, which keeps weight loss steady. Taking a run outside is generally better than being on a treadmill in the gym. When you can, run outside. When the weather prohibits being outdoors, transition to a treadmill. If you only listen to one fitness tip, it should be the one that says to wear shoes that fit. Your feet are biggest in the evening, so this is the best time to shop for shoes. There should be at least a half of an inch at the end of your shoe, between it and your large toe. You should be able to wiggle your toes. When beginning in fitness routine, avoid calling it a workout or exercise. It will be hard to remain motivated if you think of working out as a negative thing. Instead, name the specific activity, such as walking, jogging or cycling. A fitness regimen has many benefits. Your emotional health and outlook on life can also benefit from a fitness program. Workouts cause endorphins to be released, which in turn create a euphoric feeling. You can also improve your confidence and self-image. Therefore, a couple of workouts can make you happy. Although running can be great for your body, after an extended amount of time, it can also cause damage. To exercise damage control, give yourself a mini-break from running by reducing the distance you run to half, for about a week at a time, every six weeks or so. Cutting back for a week gives your body time to heal and will help you to avoid unnecessary injuries. You should never perform exercises when your body is ailing. Let your body heal back up at a normal pace when you become sick. Your body can't effectively build muscle and fight off an illness at the same time. So you have to have a break from working out until you feel better. Until then, follow your doctor's directions, eat nutritious foods and get adequate rest. It can be hard to get into shape, but also it can be fun. You can use some of the information contained in this article to increase your successes with your workout program. You should look at keeping in shape as something that is a lifestyle that requires attention every day. If you push to exercise harder and a bit more often, you will see much better results.

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Their talk will the followed by a reception featuring Syrian food. Tickets for the Toronto event can be purchased here . They are $30 but Canada Letter readers can chop off $10 with the code Cooking. Much of the reporting about workplace sexual harassment and the abuse of power by men has focused on the entertainment industry. Albert Schultz stepped down at Toronto’s Soulpepper Theater after a lawsuit accused him of sexual misconduct. Credit Chris Young/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press That was certainly the case this week in Canada. Albert Schultz resigned as the artistic director of Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre Company after four actors filed a lawsuit against him and the theater. Mr. Schultz has said that he intends to “vigorously” defend himself. But most people have jobs in far less glamorous fields. And in the blue-collar world, women must often deal not only with supervisors but also with co-workers who are harassers. Women who work at Ford Motor Company plants in Chicago told their stories to Susan Chira and Catrin Einhorn, herself a Chicago native. A powerful union and an employer with sophisticated human resources policies offered them little protection. Ford recently settled sexual and racial harassment cases at the two factories for $10 million.

For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/world/canada/google-toronto-food-canada-letter.html

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Basketball is something that people all over the world love to play. It's something that anyone that's any age is able to have fun with. When you step on a basketball court, practice teamwork and be a good sport regardless of the score. If you seek to know more about this game, keep reading. Practice your defense more than your offense. Basketball games are won with a good defense. Without good defense, a basketball team will lose the match. Know how to dribble the ball in the correct way. When dribbling the basketball, use your fingertips rather than the palm of your hand. When you do this you will have more control over the ball. You should be dribbling the ball at your side instead of in front of your body. The ball should always be dribbled at waist level. Keep your eyes up. If you want to excel, you have to play to your strengths. Your talents might not make you a star, but when you make the most of your strengths, you might better contribute to your team. Focus on the skills you have and work to make them better. Perfect your layup technique. Layups comprise approximately 80 percent of all shots. When you practice, run full speed ahead at the basket, jump, and shoot. This method will teach you to improve your jumps and shots throughout the game. You can improve your passing skills by practicing a simple drill where dribbling is forbidden. This helps to develop passing skills with your teammates, making it much more difficult if you're standing in one spot and not dribbling. Don't get upset if it seems hard, this will improve your team's passes over time. Don't bulk up if you want to be good as a jump shooter. Being weighed down by too much bulky muscle can have a negative impact on your jump shot. Some professional shooting guards made their arms so big that it started decreasing their field goal percentage. A good basketball player is really quick on his feet. If you want the advantage, you need to be quicker than your opponents. Playing fast takes practice, though, and steady drilling. However, don't try and push past your limits. You will not be able to control your moves if you play faster than you are able to. If your opponent is pressing hard, you can give yourself some room to work by dribbling the ball between your legs. Take a step back or forward and bounce the ball hard through your legs. Mastering this move can help give you an advantage on the court. Practice passing while looking in other directions. This is a great way to fake out your opponents. The look will cause your guard to turn away. It can be a really powerful play. The key to great defense is being a nuisance to the player you are guarding. Force them away from their comfort zone. Display aggressiveness in your chosen moves. Don't let your opponent decide their own plays. If you do, your opponent will run all over you. Rather, you make the initial move and break up their flow. To nab a rebound from a free throw attempt of a teammate, footwork is key. The defender in your path will be moving at you, so be sure you're thinking of how to get past that defender. Now you can achieve a proper rebound and not commit a foul. What makes basketball so popular? It's fun to play and it's easy too. If you're a basketball fan, the above tips cannot be given a price tag. Enjoy yourself as you play and use these great tips to increase your skills.

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