AMERICAN GUNMEN

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXVI, Issue 3422, 20 February 1936, Page 2

AMERICAN GUNMEN

OUTNUMBER ARMED FORCES. “There are as many armed gangsters in the United States as there are officers and men in the Army and Navy.” When the Federal Attorney General, Mr Homer Cummings, made this sensational statement recently before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was immediately challenged to make good his words. A few days later he returned to say: “Gentlemen, I must apologise. I should have said that there are two armed thugs to every man in the American forces.”

He gave figures to support his claim. In one year, he said, 1264 cities, with a population of 50,000,000, furnished the Federal authorities with statistics showing that 266,898 crimes—covering murder, robbery and desperate assault—were committed. In each instance the criminals were armed. “But,” said Mr Cummings to the Senate Committee, “these statistics cover only a section of the crime committed in a population of 125,000,000. I confidently assert that the number of armed gunmen in the underworld is 557,891. The United States regular forces number 241,570.”

Mr Cummings showed the committee a typical gangster “arsenal,” consisting of machine-guns, automatic pistols, police uniforms and motor car license plates. Heavier weapons, too, are often stolen from the National Guard armouries in the various States. The cost of crime to the American people is estimated at £2,000,000,000 a year.