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WAR ON THE AUTOMATIC.
  We occasionally read in the papers of the man
who “didn’t know it was loaded," and incidentally
of the sudden deaths in his family or among his
friends.  One of the men of this type has been
trying his hand at legislation. He drafted a bill
and secured its introduction in the Massachusetts
Legislature, entitled, an Act to Prevent the Use
and Sale of Automatic Fire Arms. This bill was
as follows:
  "It shall be unlawful for anyone to own, use,
keep, or possess, sell, offer to sell, or advertise to
sell any automatic gun, rifle, revolver, or dan-
gerous automatic fire arm whatsoever.  Whoever
violates this act shall be punished by a fine of not
over $100 for each offense, or imprisoned for not
over thirty days. An automatic weapon, under
this act, is one by which the explosion of one
charge operates to discharge the weapon again,
or one by which more than one missile is dis-
charged by a single or continued pressureof the
trigger. This statute shall in no way affect the
sale or use of any arm or arms for military pur-
poses."
  Perhaps the members of the Legislature were
wise to the merits of the bill; at any rate, some
humorist moved that the bill be refrrred to the
committee on “probate and chancery," and it was
referred accordingly.  This committee gave a
hearing, at which representatives of several game
associations appeared and advocated the measure,
as reported in SHOOTING AND FISHING of March
9, under the head of New England Game Notes.
These gentlemen, according to newspaper report,
directed their attack chiefly against a certain shot
gun of the automatic type, the invention of an
American but manufactured abroad. It does not
appear that any attempt was made by interested
parties to oppose the bill, but the committee on
probate and chancery reported “leave to with
draw.” This is the legislative way of telling an

of such gun for such purpose be prohibited. The
prohibition of the pump guns was advocated some
years ago for the same reason. But to forbid the
ownership by any civilian of anything in the form
of an automatic fire arm is going altogether too
far. In the pistol or rifle form it is a legitimate
weapon for use of the frontiersman, the explorer,
the police officer, or the man who has perhaps his
life and property to defend. It is not a fit play-
thing for children. but neither is the common re-
volver. The owner of the automatic weapon
should understand its structure and its proper use,
but so should the owner of the revolver. The
automatic has come, and it has come to stay.  It
will be with us, I believe, long after the last re-
volver has been laid away in a glass case, with the
flintlock and the matchlock, as a relic of a bygone
day.
  In hunting birds or small game, where the law
allows a bag of a dozen or more, possibly an
automatic weapon would tend toward extermina-
tion, as was argued before the legislative com-
mitteeon probate and chancery, but in hunting
large game like the moose, where a single speci-
men is all that the law allows for any sportsman
in any one season, I believe an automatic rifle of
heavy caliber would decrease rather than increase
the number killed. This sounds contradictory,
I am quite aware. In the fall of 1903 I hunted at
Munsungan lake on the upper Aroostook, in
Maine. Seven moose were reported wounded but
lost that season in that section. Each of those
seven hunters felt justified in continuing the hunt,
and probably some of them at another trial suc-
ceeded in killing their game. Thus seven hunters
may have killed ten or a dozen moose without
making themselves amenable to the law; whereas,
if they had used effective rifles of automatic type,
the number of moose destroyed might have been
reduced to seven.

Long read but quite striking.

I guess I've got to hide my fully automatic revolvers from the popos now.