Peace Will Seek Repeal of School ‘Stun-Gun’ Law

Saying the Legislature “had made a mistake,” Assemblyman Steve Peace said Wednesday he will try to repeal a law passed last year that allows teachers and other school personnel to carry electronic “stun guns” to protect themselves.

The San Diego Democrat said California lawmakers never intended to allow teachers to use the battery-powered devices, which temporarily daze and immobilize victims.

But through a drafting error, he said, legislators gave that privilege to school personnel when they wrote an amendment into the new law prohibiting students from bringing stun guns on campus.

Peace said Wednesday that at the request of school officials and parents in San Diego, he has drafted new legislation to repeal the special permission for school personnel to have stun guns “and I don’t expect serious difficulty in securing passage.”

“Except for gun shop owners, I can’t find anybody who thinks it is a good idea,” Peace said during a press conference at his capital office.

The devices, which look like a television remote control, have been marketed as self-defense weapons by Texas-based Nova Technologies Inc. for about three years, said company spokeswoman Rebecca Murphy. Including batteries and a charger, they retail for around $90.

Three states--Michigan, Rhode Island and Hawaii--ban them outright. Several others states, including California, rushed to restrict their use last year after five New York City police officers were indicted for using the guns to torture four men arrested on drug charges.

Last year’s bill, introduced by Assemblyman Steve Clute (D-Riverside), was California’s first attempt to regulate the purchase, use and possession of the weapons. It passed both houses of the Legislature and four committees last year without a single “nay” vote. Besides provisions regarding possession of stun guns on school campuses, the bill prohibits their possession by convicted felons, drug addicts and youngsters under 16 without written parental consent.

Gov. George Deukmejian signed the measure into law in September and it took effect in January.

But fearing that some teachers would use the weapons to discipline unruly students, a group of San Diego parents expressed outrage when they learned of the new law.

In January, Gayle Boyle, president of the San Diego Teachers Assn., urged teachers not to take advantage of the law, and the San Diego Unified School Board adopted a policy discouraging employees from bringing them on campus.

H. David Fish, the school district’s legislative director, said school officials feared they could not adopt an outright policy barring school personnel from bringing stun guns on campus unless the Legislature changed the law.

Murphy said the manufacturer does not condone the use of stun guns to discipline students. “Never in my wildest dreams,” she added, did she expect the California law to be viewed as suggesting they should be.

But the company’s Sacramento-based lobbyist, Grant Kenyon, took issue with the suggestion that the exception for teachers was added due to a drafting error. There was concern, he said, that teachers who wanted stun guns for protection should be allowed to have them.

“If I worked in one of those schools, I’d want four of them,” Kenyon said.