Editorials

...Noting the administration's argument that "all elements of society, including business, will share the pain of the spending reductions," Business Week has reassured its readers that, in fact, "the impact on business will generally be light and, in some cases, will be offset by the planned buildup in U.S...

...and we worry that the very senselessness of their acts can become a kind of blank page on which to write some larger case that, in truth, should stand or fall on its own merits and quite apart from the murderous incidents at hand...

...If March 30 was different, it was not only because the news from the first about the president's condition was reassuring...

...and their reprieve from budget surgery is due less to social welfare calculations than political ones...

...Nor is all the burden on the would-be purchaser...

...The effect on the church may be grievous...

...military capacity...

...Brady to the thousands of victims of assassinations and their families throughout the world...

...Most of the nations studied require anyone who wants to buy a gun to obtain a license first, usually through the local police...

...The president, we were first assured, was safe, but other victims of the assassination attempt lay close to death...

...In 1963, too, we demanded an explanation, a meaning for the event...

...It is a moment when we pray for those who risk and sacrifice their lives in public service...

...Perhaps there are justifications for such a step...

...Thatcher, Great Britain has a zooming unemployment rate and in some in areas racial tensions run high...

...Each has seemed afflicted with a special and private madness...

...If is worse yet if one concludes that it is simply the end...

...For many of today's losers the gains of tomorrow will never come...

...Thus getting a license is not simply a pro forma operation in the first place, and once gotten such a license must be regularly renewed...

...The new law belies it...

...Suddenly news came that once again the fabric of political life had been rent by violence...

...We wanted to learn something about ourselves, so that such an event could be prevented in the future...

...We have criticized Ronald Reagan's policies, and because the lives of so many othes depend on those policies, we do not think that criticism should be muted now...

...And one step up on the income ladder are the low-income workers and the lower middle-class and middle-class citizens who will be most affected by a variety of cuts in CETA jobs, mass transit, health and education, and support for economically needy cities and regions...

...Gun dealers are also subject to control, with hefty fines fon selling to anyone without a valid license...

...it has egalitarian connotations...

...Conditions for granting such licenses vary, but they generally require a rigorous check on the applicant's background, possible police record and occasionally his or her mental health record as well...

...But the fact itself should not be obscured by the other, more official, rhetoric about "even-handedness," or "across-the-board" sacrifices, or preserving the "social safety net" for the "truly needy...

...President Joao Baptista Figueriredo has been trumpeting a "democratic opening...

...Even then it is true that we may never be able to match Great Britain's murder rate of one-tenth of ours, but surely any substantial reduction in violent crime would be worth the effort.ould be worth the effort...

...It is a moment when we recognize the precarious state of global survival that rests so heavily in the hands of a few leaders of nuclear powers...

...How successful are these laws...

...The perversity of this demand is obvious, which explains why almost no one is admitting that this is exactly what is occurring...

...Waste there is, of course, and it should be eliminated where possible...

...Most Americans over thirty still remember exactly where they were and what they were doing on that grim day in November of 1963...

...Under Mrs...

...Nearly forty percent of the Catholic clergy is foreign-born...

...A Gallup poll shows that Americans think half their federal tax dollars are wasted...

...If the new rules are strictly adhered to, the government now has a mechanism to stop the flow of missionaries to the country...

...This consolation, too, contains some truth, but not enough to take us very far...

...Manufacturers are subject to strict governmental regulation so guns produced by them can be controlled and more easily traced...

...Justifications, in fact, do lie buried in the economic and psychological theories that guide the Reagan administration...

...there were last year 340,000 cases of violent crimes (murder, robbery, aggravated assault) involving the use of a firearm...

...Its potential impact on Brazil's progressive church, increasingly the sole defender of peasants and Indians dispossessed and displaced by industrial and agribusiness development in the interior, does indicate something new- and possibly crippling...

...It can also be the mother of despair...

...The administration does not like the term "redistribution...

...Indeed they may be better for it, prodded to stand on their own, jarred into self-reliance and greater effort...

...MORE ON GUN CONTROL In our March 13 issue, an article by Don B.Kates made a case against mandatory gun control, arguing that that approach simply would not work...

...In Japan, private ownership of handguns is simply forbidden...

...But the proposed budget is an -exercise in redistribution, from the less well-off to the wealthy...

...Nor will marriage to a Brazilian, unless of three years duration, any longer prevent deportation...

...Figueriredo obviously wants to be bishop, indeed the episcopal primate...

...nonetheless, the murder rate in Britain is one-tenth that of the United States...

...Editorialists and public commentators held forth on the spirit of Dallas, the authoritarian personality of the right and (when more was learned of the gunman) of the left, the pervasiveness of violence in America...

...In West Germany, with 70 million inhabitants, there were less than 300...

...The idea of a government so unabashedly playing Robin Hood in reverse is not one with which Americans are comfortable...

...To the objection that a brighter future for all ought to be paid for by all, and in proportion to their current and probably future stake in society, the administration answers that only the wealthy can invest and manage society's resources efficiently...

...Then we simply didn't believe it could happen...

...As we said, no one argues that guns alone are the only factor in such crime statistics, but their presence or absence in quantity must have some significance...

...Far more will "make do" by simply suffering quietly...

...The first reaction, then, was of utter, numbing disbelief...

...This makes more sense, but it is still not convincing...

...Since then we have grown less confident that any generalizations can be made from the deeds of individuals like Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, Arthur Bremer...

...So we have various way of consoling ourselves...

...In effect, the Brazilian state security police are now authorized to act as the long arm of neighboring oppressive regimes who target dissident exiles for repatriation-arrest, denial of legal hearing, and expulsion, all within twenty-four hours...

...One out of every five families on welfare would be rendered ineligible or have their benefits reduced under the Reagan proposals...

...CHURCH Brazil's old "Alien Law" was no piece of cake...

...There are two ways of looking at this...

...Those gains will be realized, if they are realized at all, in different parts of the country, in different industries, and perhaps in a different generation...

...We can believe that most of these government expenditures were "fat...

...Three-quarters of the tax cuts proposed for next year will go to the upper quarter of the taxpayers...

...Some people will "make do" - by slipping into alcoholism, by taking out their rage on neighbors and passers-by and then filling our prisons, by neglecting or abusing children and passing social costs on to another generation...

...In Japan, with 115 million citizens, there were 171...

...The presidency is apparently not enough...

...The editorial questioning the philosophy of the administration's budget was being completed...

...There is another way of consoling ourselves...

...Nor will it be the sons and daughters of today's losers who, pushed further into disadvantage, are most likely to be the beneficiaries of that brighter future...

...Now, after the Memphis balcony and the Los Angeles hotel kitchen and so many other incidents of similar violence at home and abroad (Aldo Moro, Lord Mountbatten, Allard Lowenstein, John Lennon, Archbishop Romero), we know all to well and all too sadly that it can happen...

...But as the cuts come closer to home, or as they are studied in detail, it is hard to sustain the notion that nothing but "fat" is at stake...

...The new one, passed last summer, has a lot of people worried...

...It is a moment when we reflect on the value of human life and the depth of family sorrow, and extend our thoughts from Washington to Atlanta, from the president and Mr...

...it would take some years before the present huge supply of handguns could be brought under some kind of control, and federal regulation would be required rather than the present system with thousands of different and often conflicting local statutes...

...But there are also sound political reasons for wondering whether, in practice, that brighter future is what this budget is really about...

...The "confinement" clause (article 18) has one obvious intent: to keep missionaries out of the hinterland, away from the earth's wretched...

...The law envisions resident visas only for those whose skills contribute to increased industrial production-a criterion few missionaries are likely to meet...

...Redistribution, Reagan-style, is questionable enough as a means...

...Yet the easy availability of handguns must have some bearing on violent crimes, especially unpremeditated crimes of sudden passion...

...Church authorities are alarmed...

...Kates raised some very good points, which is why we printed his piece...

...But there are still a lot of arguments on the other side of the question...

...Gun control is certainly not the only factor in a high or low crime rate...

...and a few indiscreet souls like David A. Stockman have dared to express diem openly...

...It is the belief that the "poor'' are not really so poor, that the individuals, the regions, the neighborhoods being deprived of revenues and services will only be marginally affected...

...There are sound economic reasons for not sharing the administration's faith in this matter...

...But the president has surely shown himself a man of indomitable spirit...

...It is true that many of the targets of the budget cuts will only be marginally affected...

...It is a moment when we think about the meaning of an open society-heads of police states are seldom shot...

...It is also true that necessity is the mother of invention - sometimes...

...BRAZIL VS...

...And the nation's...

...Out of the 220 million people in the U.S...

...The effect would not be immediate...

...Even if not used in this way, there's the threat the new law will be-if compliance and complicity are not forthcoming...

...One of the strongest of these cases for gun control rests on the experience of other major Western industrialized nations - experience examined in a report months ago in the Washington Post...

...The administration presents that brighter economic future as the end that justifies these particular means...

...The wealthy must have a greater share, therefore, in these resources and be freed of restrictions on their use...

...The second way of looking at the Reagan redistribution is that poorer Americans are being asked ' to finance the future economic growth of the country...

...It is a moment when we think again of our constitutional safeguards and renew our dedication to orderly debate and democratic government...

...With this, the government bids to assume control over the church's pastoral ministry...

...Given this country's soaring rate of violent crime involving handguns, it is hard to see why gun control should not be given a serious try...

...Often enough, however, that may be the crucial margin that sustains the spirit if not even the body...

...Their losses today will redound to the benefit of all tomorrow...

...We rejoice in the prospect of his swift recovery...

...some commentators argue that a tradition of violence stains all American history, and there is undoubtedly some truth in this...

...ROBIN HOOD IN REVERSE By now the basic fact behind the Reagan budget has been widely recognized: it takes from the poor and gives to the rich...

...It rescinds Brazil's agreement to the Caracas and Montevideo accords on the right to political asylum...

...The three largest of the seven "safety net" programs that the president exempted from cuts - Social Security, medicare, and veterans' benefits - are important measures but they do not primarily assist the "truly needy...

...In some countries applicants must also pass a grueling exam to prove experience and competence in handling a weapon...

...One is that the middle- and low-income groups are being asked to sacrifice disproportionately for the military buildup that, it is claimed, America requires...

...Nonetheless, a moment like this is almost a ritual one calling for wider reflections...

...But you cannot always cut out a pound of "fat" without spilling a good deal of blood at the same time...

...Of the 25 million Americans below the poverty line, 15 million receive either nothing at all from the exempted safety-net programs or at most a free school lunch for the children...

...Its impact on political exiles from other countries-of whom there are, by unofficial estimates, one hundred to three hundred thousand-does not, by right-wing standards, represent a novelty...

...But even for those with permanent visas, the government may now confine externs to live in a certain area and be employed as the government sees fit...

...Somehow they will make do...