Local News in Brief : Toy Gun Ban Advances

The Santa Monica City Council voted Tuesday to consider an ordinance that would ban the sale of toy weapons. The ordinance will be opened to public hearing at the council’s next meeting, Nov. 10.

The council was originally scheduled to vote on an ordinance that would have made brandishing toy guns a misdemeanor and would have required warning labels on replica weapons. However, council member Allan Katz moved to stiffen the ordinance to include an all-out ban on sales. The city manager’s staff argued that enforcing a ban only in Santa Monica would be impractical, but Katz insisted on what he called the “symbolic and political gesture.”

“The more communities that take a position like this, the easier it will make it for the state Legislature to take this position (and) for communities around us to do it,” he said. “If we all agree on the ultimate goal, that these toys are not healthy, it seems to me we should make the strongest possible statement, that we don’t want these toys in Santa Monica and you will have to go elsewhere to get them.”