This story freaked me out when it became known.
The late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy — who had some intimate knowledge of gun violence — made some remarks on May 27, 1968. His topic? Gun control.
RFK was responding to a sign in the crowd about the right to “keep and bear arms.”
He said: “With all the violence and murder and killings we’ve had in the United States, I think you will agree that we must keep firearms from people who have no business with guns or rifles.”
Sen. Kennedy was not advocating disarming Americans. He wasn’t calling for the feds to take people’s firearms away. He was speaking as one whose own brother, President John F. Kennedy, was killed by a man with a rifle in Dallas less than five years earlier.
The place where he made the remarks is in the news again. He spoke in Roseburg, Ore., as he campaigned for the presidency of the United States. Today, Roseburg is reeling from the shock of the massacre at Umpqua Community College by a maniac who then killed himself.
Late the next day — it was nearly midnight, as I recall — RFK pulled into a Portland restaurant next door to where I was working. I ran across the parking lot, extended a piece of paper and a pen to the senator and asked him for his autograph.
He signed the paper, “RF Kennedy,” and then went inside.
The next day, Oregon primary voters delivered him a stunning defeat when they cast most of their Democratic Party votes for Sen. Gene McCarthy.
RFK trudged off to California, won that state’s primary the next week — and then was murdered by Sirhan B. Sirhan in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
