Bradley Alters Stand, Opposes Gun Control

Mayor Tom Bradley on Sunday reversed a position he believes helped defeat his bid for the governorship in 1982, telling an interviewer that he now would oppose any effort to impose a handgun control law in California.

But he stopped short of saying he is personally against such laws.

“The people of California . . . in 1982 spoke on that issue and overwhelmingly were opposed,” he said in an interview on KNBC-TV’s “News Conference” show. “I don’t believe that, in the face of that overwhelming vote, it ought to be brought up again--and if it is, I will oppose it.”

Deputy Mayor Tom Houston later said this is not really a new position for Bradley. He said the mayor made similar statements several months ago in response to questions from labor officials in private meetings.

Backed Initiative

In 1982, Bradley supported Proposition 15, a ballot initiative that would have banned most new handgun sales in this state. The proposed law would also have required registration of all existing handguns with the attorney general’s office and would have mandated jail sentences for unregistered selling or carrying of such weapons.

Bradley’s Republican opponent in the election was George Deukmejian, who opposed the initiative, saying that it would do nothing to reduce crime or to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals--while enforcement would require the state to set up a new and massive bureaucracy.

Analysis of the vote after the election indicated that a high percentage of “crossover” Democrats and independents who voted for Deukmejian might not have voted at all had it not been for the gun control issue.

They were drawn to the polls by a desire to vote against the handgun control initiative, the analysts reasoned, and then voted for Deukmejian as a logical alternative to Bradley, who had supported the measure.

‘The First to Oppose’

In the interview Sunday, Bradley said he agrees with this reasoning.

“I think the issue that perhaps hurt more than any other (in the governor’s race) was the gun control issue,” he said, and added, “I’ll tell you now that if it is on the ballot again, I’ll be the first to oppose it.”

Bradley said his original decision to back the gun control proposal was made because he saw it “through the eyes of a former cop, who has seen too many of his colleagues . . . have their heads blown off.”

But he did not answer a question concerning his own personal feelings about gun control.

In the televised interview, Bradley also declined to reveal his decision on whether to try again for the governorship.

However, he promised to set a date “sometime soon” to officially declare his intentions. And he sounded very much like a candidate as he denounced Deukmejian as a “caretaker” chief executive who is lacking in vision.

“Deukmejian,” he said, “has been a failure as governor of this state.

“Here is a man who has simply sat as a caretaker in the office of governor, while this state and all its problems simply pass by his desk without him uttering much of anything in the way of what he proposes to do about it.”

He also criticized Deukmejian’s handling of California’s toxic waste problems, which he called a “time bomb that is about to explode.”

During the interview, the mayor was also questioned about his recent trips abroad.

Bradley, who won the mayor’s office in 1973 with a campaign in which he attacked incumbent Sam Yorty’s globe trotting, defended his recent trips to Japan, Israel, Brazil and other nations as an effort to help establish trade ties.