Commission Asks Ban on Live Ammo

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Student violence and National Guard gunfire at Kent State University were condemned yesterday as "intolerable" and "inexcusable" by a Presidential commission which probed the May 4 killing of four students and the wounding of nine.

"The Kent State tragedy must surely mark the last time that loaded rifles are issued as a matter of course to Guardsmen confronting student demonstrators," the commission said.

Shades of Jackson

The findings echoed the commission's conclusions last week on the shootings at Jackson State.

The commission, headed by former Pennsylvania governor William W. Scranton, used the Kent State experience to underline the recommendation of its main report last week, which called for a cooling of rhetoric on all sides, moral leadership by the President himself, and an end to the undue leniency of some college administrators and unwarranted harshness by some law enforcement officials.

Nine Findings

In a 22,500-word report drawn from hundreds of intenviews, three days of hearings, and 8000 pages of FBI investigation, the commission found in part:

The weight of evidence shows that no order was given to National Guardsmen to fire at the students or anything else.

The Guardsmen were not under sniper fire. "Nothing was found to indicate that anyone other than a Guardsman discharged a firearm during the incident," the report said.

Guardsmen had bullets in the chambers of their weapons "loaded and locked" from the moment they stepped on campus. All that was needed to fire was a finger flick of a switch near the trigger. Twice before in the 35 hours preceding the shooting, Guard detachments had knelt and leveled their rifles without firing.

The 61 shots were fired from M-1 30-caliber high-velocity rifles, a shotgun, and two 45-caliber pistols in 13 seconds, hitting the 13 students.

Aggressive people in the crowd were closer than 20 yards to the Guardsmen-never at bayonet point as one said-and the main crowd was some 75 yards away when the firing occurred. The danger "was not a danger which called for lethal force."

The specific student assembly was peaceful at the outset.

The Guard itself became the transcendent issue, and it never did disperse the crowd as it set out to do.

Nothing was found by the FBI to suggest SDS elements had a hand in the disturbances. However, FBI information indicates that the burning of the ROTC building Saturday night may have been planned, since "railroad flares, a machette, and ice packs are not customarily carried to peaceful rallies."

Finally, "a significant proportion" of those at the burning were not Kent State students.