GUNS FOR GANGSTERS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6867, 23 March 1929, Page 13 (Supplement)

GUNS FOR GANGSTERS

HOW CROOKS OBTAIN WEAPONS ARMOURED MOTOR-CARS Interesting investigations have been made recently concerning the weapons and motor “forts” used by the American gunmen, who are warring on rival gangs of bootleggers as reprisal for the invasion of the territory in which they claim exclusive rights to sell smuggled spirits, says the “News of the World.” Their favourite weapon is not the revolver, which needs time for aiming. The prospective murderer goes to a pawnshop or sportsgoods shop and buys a double-bar-relled shot-gun, costing a few pounds. No regulations have to be complied with or dodged. No inquiry is made by the salesman. He takes it home, puts it in a vice, and cuts or files the barrels in half.

Usually, too, he cuts down the stock until it gives a revolver grip and enables him to fire the weapon with one hand without raising it to the shoulder.- • It can now be carried slung inside the leg of a baggy pair of trousers. It has proved to be the ideal weapon for the normal type of gunman murder nowadays. The usual practice is to trail the selected victim iu a car with a false identification number along a city street where there is so much traffic that the assassin’s car attracts no attention, slow down a moment, fire almost point blank, and streak off at high speed before bystanders have glanced away from the prostrate prey, lying in a pool of blood on the pavement. They buy, or make for themselves, cartridges containing a dozen buckshot about the size of a large pea.

The spread is increased by the shortened barrel, so that, fired across a street, the 12 shots tear through a target of about a yard in diameter simultaneously, where a revolver would place only one or two bullets before the victim dodged. Single barrel automatic shot-guns are also used by the professional murderers. Rapid Fire

When machine-guns are used they are usually of the Thompson and Browning types, costing £25 each. They lire in several ways—one shot every time the trigger is pulled, in bursts of three or six shots in quick succession, or continuously at the rate of 100 shots a minute. A Philadelphia gunmen's arsenal has been found to have distributed no fewer than 450 Vickers light machine-guns in the past IS months. Quite a brisk manufacture of bullet-proof steel tunics, worn under the shirt to protect the body, has been called into being by the orgy of murder which is now accepted as a commoplace in the big cities of the

Land of Liberty. The Public Prosecutor of Philadelphia found recently that a bootlegger leader had bought seven of these pieces of armour, at £3O a-piece, for members of his gang. Private motor forts or armoured cars are in use, usually skilfully camouflaged and parked away in inconspicuous garages attached to little suburban houses. The thickness of the special toughened glass—an inch —of the windshield of a car of this kind, parked against the kerb in a suburban street of Philadelphia, gave its real character away to a plain-clothes detective who happened to be passing. In Self Defence Quickly he telephoned to police headquarters from a house nearby, and a strong detachment of police came along and seized it. Steel armour lined the car. There were two firing loopholes up in front, and a sawed-off shotgun, with a couple of handfuls of cartridges in the pocket at each side of the driver’s seat. The usual excuse was made by the owner when he came out of the house to find his car seized. He had been sentenced to death by rivals, and this nice litle vehicle had been contrived. All the gunmen say that, when they are caught with weapons. They even justify their murders by referring the police to the numerous highly-re-spectable authorities on military warfare who teach, as a principle, that attack is the best form of defence. “I had to shoot him,” they declare indignantly, “or he would have shot me. A free citizen of God’s own country has the right to save his own life from a gunman, hasn’t he? Why, Abraham Lincoln himself said . . .” And so on and so forth. Some extraordinary gang arsenals have been seized of late. Weapons Easily Bought

When the Chicago police paid a call at the quiet, respectable little home of a tough gentleman who had been arrested in connection with a train robbery, they found a dozen sawed-off shotguns; masks, machine-guns, revolvers of many a pattern, knives, daggers, dynamite and safe drills, and quantities of ammunition. The Philadelphia police suddenly declared war on the city’s gunmen, and collected from them, in the course of a month, machine-guns, sawed-off shotguns, knuckle-dusters, revolvers, bombs, haud-grenades, and so forth—a haul of more than 500 weapons. The amazing thing about this state of affairs is the absence of legislation to discourage assassins. Weapons are as easy to buy as cakes of chocolate. Frequently revolvers are won by children as prizes for luck at the dartboard or skittle-alley at fairs. If laws were passed establishing a police registry of the ownership of every weapon, and a stiff, prison sentence for unauthorised possesion far fewer persons wcfiild run the risk of being discovered with the tools of murder iu their keeping.