All Sides Open Fire on State Gun Permit Laws

When retired prison guard John Fratis, worried by veiled--and some not-so-veiled--death threats from former inmates, applied for renewal of his concealed handgun permit, he thought that it would be little more than a formality.

But Sacramento Police Chief John P. Kearns refused the 60-year-old former correctional officer last year, saying he was “unable to substantiate any threats.”

Fratis, who retired in 1979 after 27 years at Folsom State Prison, then found a sympathetic ear three blocks away in Sacramento County Sheriff Robbie Waters, who not only issued him a gun permit, but also indicated that other retired correctional officers living in Sacramento County could get them too--few questions asked.

Fratis’ experience, not uncommon, illustrates the confusion and uncertainty surrounding gun permit policies in California. The state’s gun laws “are inconsistently applied, poorly constructed and, in some cases, confusing to the point of incomprehensibility,” according to a recent report by the Assembly Office of Research.

Widely Varying Whims

Concealed weapons permits generally are valid throughout the state but are issued by local police chiefs and sheriffs. These officials have almost total discretion under current law to issue such annual permits to anyone deemed “of good moral character” who has “good cause” to carry a gun. The only restriction is that permit holders must live or work in the county in which the permit was issued.

Those standards are subject to such widely varying whims, attitudes and legal interpretations that only 11 such permits were issued last year in San Francisco, while 3,418 were issued in sparsely populated Shasta County in far Northern California--one for every 39 residents.

Such disparities are causing California’s decades-old laws governing concealed weapons permits to come under attack here from all sides. Gun owner groups say restrictive policies enforced in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Francisco are indirect ways of imposing unconstitutional handgun bans.

Statewide Policy

Gun control advocates say a statewide policy could reduce confusion. Civil libertarians say a statewide standard could end favoritism under which the rich and the influential--and political campaign contributors--get gun permits far easier than do ordinary citizens.

“I don’t care how you feel about guns. Clearly, there has been some abuse of discretion,” said Bill Cavala, a top aide to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco). “You’ve got some rural sheriffs who like to give them (permits) out like candy. Then, you’ve got some urban sheriffs who won’t give them out at all.”

‘Absolutely a Sham’

“It is absolutely a sham,” said Dave Marshall, Sacramento-based lobbyist for the National Rifle Assn.

The issue became more visible this week when the state Supreme Court ruled that applications for gun permits must be open to public scrutiny. Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, writing a majority opinion that made note of disparities among counties, said the public needs to know “whether the law is being properly applied or carried out in an evenhanded manner.”

Major changes in California’s concealed weapons permit law that were sought by the NRA were narrowly defeated in the Legislature last month amid heavy lobbying by law enforcement officials. Essentially, the bills would have stripped away the discretion of local law enforcement chiefs by setting up specific qualifications and requiring that permits be issued to all who met them.

The measure is expected to be reintroduced after the Legislature reconvenes in December. Police chiefs and sheriffs, afraid that such a law would make gun permits available to practically anyone, are looking for ways to combat it.

Permits are not needed to keep a handgun in one’s home or business, or even to carry one in plain sight. But since 1917, permits have been needed in California to carry a gun hidden in a handbag or holstered under a coat.

Kern Leads the List

State Department of Justice statistics show that Kern County led all other counties with 4,948 gun permits issued last year, against only 457 issued in Los Angeles County, where the population is nearly 17 times greater.

The Los Angeles Police Department issues no concealed weapons permits. Police Commission Secretary Bill Cowdin said he does not know how many applicants refused by the commission have subsequently found other police chiefs willing to issue permits. But the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, as a matter of policy, won’t issue them to people who have already been refused by the Los Angeles police, Cowdin said.

As of 1985, the Sheriff’s Department had 71 concealed weapons permits on file, according to the state Justice Department.

San Diego and Orange counties, the state’s second and third most populous, are next to each other and for years their populations have been very close. But last year Sheriff Brad Gates and police chiefs in Orange County saw fit to issue a total of 367 concealed weapons permits, while Sheriff John Duffy and San Diego chiefs issued 2,676.

Duffy said he won’t issue a permit to which any local police chief strongly objects. But under most circumstances, Duffy said he is willing to issue one to virtually all “law-abiding citizens who feel, whether it is true or not, that they are protecting themselves by having a concealed weapon. . . .. What the hell?”

Calls It Unwise

Gates, on the other hand, said, “It is just not a wise thing to allow anybody who wants it to get a gun permit.”

He said his office reviews and investigates all applications, as required by law, and makes decisions based on individual circumstances. Attorneys and judges, for example, would not automatically qualify. “But obviously in their work, when threats are real, permits should be considered,” Gates said.

San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, ironically a staunch gun control advocate, had the only permit issued in San Francisco for a while after an explosive device, which never detonated, was found outside the bedroom window of her home in 1980. Feinstein has since turned in the permit and gotten rid of her handgun.

But San Francisco attorney Don B. Kates, who won an appellate court decision overturning a citywide handgun ban in 1982, said Feinstein’s permit should have outraged ordinary residents in a city where police officials readily admit that they refuse almost all applicants.

“What about a store owner who keeps getting robbed, or a woman who is attacked by a robber or rapist?” Kates asked. “What was so special about her (Feinstein’s) case, as opposed to other people having them?”

Charges of Favoritism

For years, top law enforcement officials, particularly those in Los Angeles and Orange counties, have been defending themselves against charges of favoritism in the issuance of gun permits.

Some even acknowledge that gun permits sometimes have been doled out as political favors, especially by county sheriffs who have to seek reelection every four years. Richard Baratta, for example, a former police chief of Cloverdale in Sonoma County, said he has heard sheriffs boast that gun permits and special deputy badges represent sources of political support and campaign contributions.

Baratta, now general manager of the Sacramento-based Police Officer Research Assn. of California, said he reviewed files and immediately came to the conclusion that gun permits had been given much too freely when he became police chief of the tiny town of 4,000 in 1971. Baratta said he adopted a stricter policy toward issuing and renewing permits, but he made no attempt to recall those already in existence because he knew that would bring the wrath of powerful town leaders down upon him.

In 1982, the Signal Hill City Council fired former Police Chief Gaylord Wert after it was revealed that he had issued a record number of concealed weapons permits, and that a city councilman and two former mayors were among those getting them. Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Peter F. Pitchess was accused in a lawsuit filed in the mid-1970s of issuing gun permits to well-known entertainment figures but refusing even to consider some other applicants despite their dangerous lines of work.

Because of a 1976 appellate court ruling growing out of that case, law enforcement agencies now accept applications for gun permits even when it is a near certainty that they will be refused.

7-Year Legal Battle

Private investigator Preston Guillory, a former Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy, is still involved in a seven-year legal battle with Orange County Sheriff Gates over a gun permit. Guillory, whose case charging discrimination is back before the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles after an appeal, said he and his lawyers will show that Gates favors campaign contributors in issuing permits.

Guillory said he has publicly criticized Gates for “selling gun permits” since he was initially denied one, and the issue has become a personal “vendetta” for the sheriff. Guillory’s lawyer, Meir J. Westreich of Santa Ana, said Gates has been so irked by Guillory’s criticism that “he hates his guts.”

Gates said he cannot discuss the case freely until it is finally settled, but he said there is no vendetta. Guillory’s permit has been denied for reasons that “are sound and based on the part of the law we are required to follow,” Gates said.

Regardless of their attitudes, police chiefs and sheriffs say gun permits should remain a matter of local control. But fearful of new legislative attempts to strip them of the power to determine who qualifies for concealed weapons permits, the state’s top lawmen are trying to agree on a set of voluntary statewide policy guidelines before the new Legislature convenes.

Orange County Sheriff Gates, president of the state Sheriff’s Assn., and Vacaville Police Chief Gary Tatum, vice president of the state Police Chiefs Assn., have decided to launch the effort to draft their own statewide policy so legislators will have something other than the NRA’s suggested guidelines when the issue is raised again.

Force It Down Throats

“I think the NRA and the California Gun Owners are going to come in and try to force this thing down people’s throats again,” said Alva Cooper, legislative advocate for the California Peace Officers Assn.

The lawmen admit that the task of drafting a policy to which all their members can subscribe will be difficult.

“I’d say it has about the same chance as a snowball in hell,” said San Diego County Sheriff Duffy, who opposed the NRA-backed legislation, although it was based on his own admittedly liberal gun permit policy. “It (a statewide policy) is just never going to work.”

“I don’t agree with a statewide standard,” Kern County Sheriff Larry Kleier said. “I don’t know what Sheriff Block’s situation is in Los Angeles, but it is certainly different than my situation up here. I have a lot of ranchers up here. . . . They feel they have a need to carry a gun. Frankly, with 8,000 square miles and only 500 deputies, I don’t have enough deputies . . . to have one on every street corner.”

“Urban counties are very different than rural counties,” acknowledged Gates, who charged that either of the two NRA-backed bills defeated last month would have virtually required that gun permits be issued to all applicants except drug addicts, mental cases or felons. “Trying to standardize those kinds of things are very difficult.”

NRA Pushing Again

The survey report by the Assembly research office was commissioned by Democratic Assemblymen Frank Vicencia of Bellflower and Steve Peace of Chula Vista. The report comes at a time when the NRA is pushing, with considerable success, for state and federal gun law changes that represent the first major erosion of controls since the 1968 assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

The NRA-backed measure sought to require local authorities to issue a concealed weapon permit to any resident aged 21 or older “knowledgeable about the safe handling of firearms.” No guidelines for determining knowledge of the safe handling of firearms were included. Convicted felons, substance abusers and some people with histories of mental illness, who are ineligible under current law, would have continued to be ineligible.

This year, both California measures dealing with concealed weapons permits surfaced during the last few scheduled weeks of the legislative session, prompting charges that the NRA and its allies were trying to sneak the measures through. In both cases, the provisions were attached to otherwise non-controversial bills that had already passed the Assembly.

One bill by Vicencia was narrowly defeated in the Senate Appropriations Committee after the controversial provisions on concealed weapons permits were added to it. A few days later, backers fell one vote short on the Senate floor of attaching nearly identical permit provisions to a bill by Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Hawthorne) that increased penalties for drive-by shootings.

But two key gun law reform measures passed by the Legislature were signed into law by Gov. George Deukmejian and will take effect in January. Under the new laws, an unloaded gun securely locked in the trunk of a car will no longer be considered a concealed weapon, and retired correctional officers will have a guaranteed privilege to carry a concealed firearm unless the head of the state’s prison system declares them unfit--a privilege similar to that afforded other retired police officers.

The NRA sees concealed weapons permits as a logical extension of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to possess arms for self-defense. If states set out specific qualifications for concealed weapons permits, police officials should be required to issue them once those criteria are met, NRA spokesmen say.

Jealously Guarded

Police officials continue to jealously guard the right to issue permits as they see fit, saying that any statewide policy should be voluntary, or at least subjective enough to leave room for local officials to exercise discretion without fear of lawsuits and costly appeals.

Even gun control advocates such as David Nagler of Californians Against Handgun Violence agree that “some kind of state guidelines would be reasonable.” But anti-gun groups sided with top law enforcement officials last month in fighting the NRA-backed legislation.

All sides say they are willing to talk. While there are no indications of any common ground, there is little doubt that the issue will be back before the Legislature.

Times staff writers Mark Landsbaum in Orange County and Jack Jones in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

CONCEALED GUN PERMITS BY COUNTY

County ’85 Permits Pop. Alameda 239 1,208,200 Alpine 39 1,180 Amador 594 23,650 Butte 964 165,200 Calaveras 407 27,250 Colusa 313 14,850 Contra Costa 409 724,000 Del Norte 50 19,000 El Dorado 978 106,100 Fresno 3,436 580,200 Glenn 506 23,200 Humboldt 502 113,800 Imperial 480 107,200 Inyo 142 18,350 Kern 4,948 486,800 Kings 154 85,300 Lake 222 48,700 Lassen 393 24,900 Los Angeles 457 8,155,300 Madera 1,296 77,200 Marin 81 227,100 Mariposa 300 13,400 Mendocino 203 74,300 Merced 505 162,100 Modoc 173 9,525 Mono 55 9,325 Monterey 134 333,200 Napa 696 104,600 Nevada 503 69,600 County ’85 Permits Pop. Orange 367 2,145,700 Placer 329 140,300 Plumas 334 19,350 Riverside 189 838,500 Sacramento 583 905,500 San Benito 94 31,050 San Bernardino 1,147 1,110,500 San Diego 2,676 2,166,200 San Francisco 11 741,600 San Joaquin 555 423,200 San Luis Obispo 632 192,900 San Mateo 274 617,100 Santa Barbara 50 337,800 Santa Clara 190 1,403,100 Santa Cruz 77 217,000 Shasta 3,418 132,600 Sierra 112 3,500 Siskiyou 820 42,800 Solano 291 279,500 Sonoma 568 339,400 Stanislaus 973 309,400 Sutter 1,160 58,900 Tehama 899 44,550 Trinity 321 13,650 Tulare 2,428 283,000 Tuolumne 797 41,700 Ventura 331 606,100 Yolo 627 124,400 Yuba 627 54,500

Source: State Departments of Finance and Justice CONCEALED GUNS 34 police agencies in Los Angeles County issue permits allowing applicants to carry concealed weapons. The Los Angeles Police Department does not issue permits. Here are Those that do:

Agencies 1985 Permits Culver City 78 Los Angeles Sheriff 71 San Fernando 52 Montebello 37 Monterey Park 50 Irwindale 29 South Pasadena 26 Inglewood 14 Hawthorne 13 Palos Verdes Estates 13 Manhattan Beach 7 El Monte 6 La Verne 6 Monrovia 6 Pomona 6 Long Beach 5 Glendora 4 Redondo Beach 4 South Gate 4 West Covina 4 Gardena 3 Santa Monica 3 Azusa 2 Downey 2 Hermosa Beach 2 Sierra Madre 2 Beverly Hills 1 Claremont 1 Covina 1 El Segundo 1 San Marino 1 Huntington Park 1 Vernon 1 Whittier 1