MACHINE GUN SALE

It is easy after the shooting is over to outline what police, bank clerks, and on-lookers should do to forestall the escape of gunmen, and to suggest that telephoning the police in the event of a hold-up should be the first thought to occur to the most inexperienced in the ways of gangsters. Likewise, from all sides comes advice concerning teletype, vault alarms, swiftness of justice, and consolidated detective agencies, yet few take seriously any suggestion to enforce strictly the limiting of machine gun sales to authorized persons.

Although efforts and laws have been made to effect such restrictions, this rather obvious method of making the machine gun robbery more difficult has never successfully been followed up. In spite of the smuggling of such weapons that is bound to result, a concerted drive by government and state officials on checking up sales, licensing, and running down these arms, would not, at this point, be untimely.