March 8, 1973 - Creation for the Commission of the Future. To make such a commission useful means getting as many people as possible to think ahead to the future. Priorities for future with transportation and architecture. The type of structures and how to contain them. Highway trust fund.
March 13, 1973 - Speaker (Henderson) states, "Mr. Newcomb's arguments could apply, as well, to no one would propose the legislature be an appointed body."
March 13, 1973 - auto mechanic regulation, fraud, consumerism. Bill purposed to make a consumer protection agency. DMA import part of AAPP grant]
March 13, 1973 - Legislation on non-smoking resolution. Note: not a law, but a resolution. Smoking, cigarettes, lucky strikes and Kool commercials, second hand smoke (says it's okay!)
March 13, 1973 - MPR’s Connie Goldman interviews members of the Women's International League Peace for Justice. Topics include a local draft repeal, court watching, gun control, family values, community, and women's rights.
March 13, 1973 - State senate purposed sales tax on hospital meals to non-patients. Sales tax, hospital meals
March 13, 1973 - Reaction to Supreme Court decision to uphold veterans' preference laws. Veterans' preference, discrimination, and women's rights in the military are discussed.
March 13, 1973 - Excerpt of Gloria Steinem speech where she talks about women and reproductive freedom, birth control, and women on welfare.
March 20, 1973 - Speaker talks about the effect of a proposed bill on gun control. He is concerned about red tape and procedures that would deny firearms to the disadvantaged. it would be impossible for the poor, the black, the Indians, the Chicanos to comply with them. This is substantive denial of due process of law. He talks about scenarios, asking what are the chances a sheriff at Cass Lake or Wounded Knee will give a gun to an Indian? The speaker cites Hubert Humphrey, who said one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. The speaker adds this is not to say firearms shouldn't be very carefully used. However, the right to bear arms is one safeguard against arbitrary government, against the tryanny which now appears remote now but has always been possible. For example, the Japanese Americans on the West Coast during WWII were stripped of their property and put in concentration camps. That was 30 years ago, more or less. It can happen; this bill makes it possible. Speaker is possibly Clyde Bellecourt, but is unknown for certain.
March 20, 1973 - Speaker says on Dec. 16, 1971 he was in a restaurant with his wife. She was shot and killed by a man who was a paranoid schizophrenic with a long history of mental illness who had five handguns. The speaker prays no one listening has to go through such a horrendous trauma. His wife was alive and radiant one moment, and the next moment on the floor with her mouth and eyes open as if to say ?why me??. He says it isn?t fun to go to the movies anymore because of the violence depicted there, or to watch television. To be honest, he says, it really irritates him to think there even has to be a discussion on such an issue. Considering what?s happened in this country over the last five to ten years, the violence that we read in the newspapers, see on TV, the increasing violent crime in Minneapolis, 62 percent over last year, twenty five murders over a five month period, most by handgun, he thinks it would be quite obvious what has to be done. That is: to reduce easy availability to those unable to cope with society, and to severely punish those who commit crimes with firearms. He says we?re so concerned with violence in other parts of the world, such as Northern Ireland which had 350 killed over a five year period. Yet in the U.S. 50 people are shot to death each day by handgun, 500 or more are seriously wounded and disabled. He asks what?s wrong with a police permit or waiting period to obtain a handgun, or more stringent penalties against those who carry a concealed weapon without a permit or commit a crime with a firearm?