Assault Weapons : Outrage Is Ammo in the War on Guns

The old green Pontiac swerved into the busy intersection of Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue, sideswiped a van and raced south as a black-and-white squad car pursued with its red lights flashing and siren shrieking.

Los Angeles Police Officers Chris Warren and Jim Harris were gaining on the car when its brake lights suddenly came on and a passenger with a military-style assault rifle leaned out a rear window and opened fire.

The officers, armed with handguns, were hopelessly overmatched by the high-powered assault weapon, which can hold 30 to 75 rounds of ammunition and is capable of sending bullets entirely through a car, ripping in one door and out the other.

Earlier Incident Recalled

Warren, who was driving, remembered in a sickening flash that just three months earlier, LAPD Officer Daniel Pratt was killed by an assault rifle in just such a situation.

“The bottom of my stomach dropped out,” he recalled afterward.

Warren hit the brakes, and both officers crouched behind the dashboard, shielding themselves with the car’s engine as bullets slammed into the front of the vehicle.

When the assailants drove on, the officers again pursued, and at Crenshaw and 63rd Street the Pontiac went out of control and smashed into a motel. As Warren and Harris pulled up, the suspects leaped from the car. One fired a .45-caliber handgun as he ran, and the other, holding the assault rifle at his waist, shot at the officers Rambo-style as he sidestepped in retreat.

“I hit the brakes again, and we swung behind a parked car for cover,” Warren said.

One suspect was subsequently arrested, and a loaded 30-round clip for an AK-47 assault rifle was found in the wrecked car. Police found 17 spent 7.62-millimeter cartridges, which are used in the AK-47, scattered on the streets.

3rd in 3 Months

The Dec. 3 incident marked at least the third time in three months that LAPD officers have been fired on with military-style assault weapons.

Pratt was killed by an AR-15 semiautomatic assault weapon Sept. 3 as he pursued a suspect in a drive-by shooting in South-Central Los Angeles, according to police. On Oct. 26, LAPD Motorcycle Officer Wilbur Carter reported that he was shot at by a motorist with an assault weapon during a traffic stop in Westwood Village. The car was subsequently found abandoned with an AK-47 inside.

Such incidents involving police officers in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the state--as well as the far more frequent attacks with assault weapons on private citizens--have caused a growing sense of outrage among law enforcement officials, legislators, local officials and residents of neighborhoods scarred by violence.

A clash between the powerful pro-gun lobby and a newly emerging coalition seeking to outlaw assault weapons seems certain to occur in Sacramento in the new year when the Legislature reconvenes.

Critics of assault weapons argue that the guns are designed for the sole purpose of killing people. They point to a growing number of cases in which innocent bystanders, frequently children, are sprayed with bullets from the guns. Some of the weapons are so powerful that they send bullets crashing through the walls of buildings, killing people in their homes.

Critics complain that assault weapons can be purchased across the counter in California gun stores by 18-year-olds using only a driver’s license as identification. Buyers of rifles and shotguns are required to fill out forms answering such questions as whether or not they have ever been convicted of felonies. But the answers are not verified.

Pro-gun advocates argue that the vast number of assault weapon owners are legitimate gun fanciers and that outlawing the firearms would be as futile as Prohibition.

Be that as it may, a task force made up of law enforcement officers and district attorneys from around the state has drawn up tentative drafts of legislation to outlaw the sale and possession of assault weapons in California.

Measures Planned

State Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) has announced his intention to carry such a measure, and Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles), who introduced an unsuccessful bill to control assault rifles this year, said he is ready to make another run at it in 1989.

There is also support for such legislation among local government officials.

At its October meeting in San Diego, the League of California Cities passed a resolution in support of legislation to outlaw the sale and possession of assault weapons.

In Oakland in October, Alameda County Supervisor Don Perata held a dramatic all-day hearing on assault weapons at which both victims of the guns and firearms dealers testified.

At the time, Perata had hopes for legislation requiring that assault rifles be sold only after a 15-day waiting period in which a prospective purchaser’s background would be checked for criminal violations, as is required for handgun sales in California.

Reaction Grows

But reaction against assault weapons has moved beyond Perata’s modest hopes.

A 15-day wait would not go far enough, according to the law enforcement task force on assault weapons, which includes representatives from the state attorney general’s office, the LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Oakland Police Department, the California Peace Officers Assn., the California District Attorneys Assn. and other organizations.

The task force is seeking an outright ban on the weapons.

“The 15-day waiting period, in our opinion, can be easily circumvented,” said Gary Mullen, executive director of the California District Attorney’s Assn. and a spokesman for the task force.

Besides the impending clash with the pro-gun lobby, the most difficult task facing the task force is defining exactly what is and what is not an assault weapon.

Great Variety

The weapons vary greatly and are made by a host of manufacturers, foreign and domestic.

Some are cheap, such as a Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifle that sells for as little as $300. Others cost $1,000 or more.

Among the most popular are the powerful AK-47 and the Israeli-made Uzi, which packs a less heavy punch but is nevertheless deadly--fast firing and relatively easy to conceal with its collapsible stock.

Assault weapons can be rifles, pistols or shotguns.

They usually are semiautomatic--firing one round for each squeeze of the trigger. But law enforcement officers have confiscated assault weapons that have been illegally converted to fire fully automatic--a continuous stream of bullets with a single pull of the trigger.

The weapons differ from hunting rifles and shotguns and conventional handguns in that they have been designed as military or paramilitary weapons.

Designed for Killing

The rifles, for example, tend to be shorter than hunting weapons, designed for close-quarter killing and shooting from the hip. And assault weapons hold more ammunition than conventional guns. The rifles, for example, use ammunition clips that hold 30 to 75 rounds as opposed to the approximately six-bullet capacity of conventional semiautomatic hunting rifles.

Hoping to assuage hunters and target shooters--and head off opposition--Mullen said the task force will compile a list of legitimate weapons that would retain their legal status under the proposed legislation.

The task force legislation would list all assault rifles and shotguns and declare it illegal to sell or possess weapons on the list. People who already possess such weapons would have a year to register them.

A regulatory commission would be established to rule on whether any new or renamed semiautomatic rifle or shotgun introduced into the state could legally be sold or possessed.

The task force proposal does not deal directly with assault pistols but would curtail their use with legislation limiting the legal size of the magazine or ammunition clip for any gun.

Limits Envisioned

Pistol clips might be limited to 20 rounds, for example, said Mullen, pointing out that conventional 9-millimeter pistols hold about 17 bullets. Rifle clips, he said, might be limited to six rounds.

Kent DeChambeau, legislative advocate for the California Rifle and Pistol Assn.--the California affiliate of the National Rifle Assn.--said his group is waiting to see the task force’s proposals before taking a position.

But DeChambeau insisted that the real problem is the person who wrongly uses an assault weapon and not the assault weapon itself.

“If, as I believe, the real problem has nothing to do with semiautomatic weapons,” DeChambeau said, “then all you’re going to do is pass a law that has nothing to do with what is killing people. . . .

“Why would anyone take a weapon--whatever it is--and drive down the street and fire into a crowd?

Calls for Evidence

” . . . They’ve not given me the evidence yet that by outlawing a certain kind of weapon you’re going to get any less killing. They’re going to kill with another weapon. It’s just the nature of the beastie. You’re talking about the kind of people that think the appropriate response is to fire a weapon into a crowd.”

DeChambeau pointed out that the most commonly used weapon in homicides remains the handgun and challenged the task force to show him statistics on assault rifles.

Such statistics are indeed almost nonexistent, but the Oakland Police Deparment has begun keeping track of the number of assault weapons confiscated in crimes. In 1986, Oakland police picked up 56 such weapons. By the fall of this year, 167 assault weapons had been confiscated.

And Oakland police, like their counterparts in other California cities, said the victims of these weapons are steadily increasing.

Bus Shot Up

Last July, for example, two teen-agers got on board an AC Transit bus to settle a grudge with the driver. One of the youngsters killed the driver with an assault weapon and then sprayed the passengers, according to Oakland police.

In October, gunmen opened fire on a private security office in an Oakland apartment complex, using an Uzi, an AK-47 and an AR-15, police said. One security guard was killed and another was seriously wounded as bullets tore through the office door.

Oakland authorities have been especially concerned by the brisk business in assault weapons conducted by the Traders gun store in neighboring San Leandro. Traders runs weekly advertisements in the Oakland Tribune offering AK-47s for as little as $287 and 1,000 rounds of ammunition for $120.

Robert C. Maynard, editor and president of the Tribune, said the paper will refuse advertisements for such weapons beginning Jan. 1 because of “the way these things were proliferating (and) the problem in the streets.”

Business Is Brisk

Tony Cucchiara, owner of Traders, said that business in assault weapons is brisk and that 90% of his customers are legitimate collectors.

Police point to a case in which a felon bought an Uzi across the counter at Traders and then used it in a murder, but Cucchiara called the incident a “one out of a million” aberration.

In Los Angeles, where the assault weapon problem is even greater, according to authorities, the Western Surplus store’s gun department in gang-ridden South-Central Los Angeles is a popular place to purchase such weapons.

A clerk in the store who identified himself only as Jesus said he sells about 10 AK-47s and two or three Uzis a month.

He said all types of people buy the guns, but that some of them look “bad.”

Nightly Event

In the surrounding streets of South-Central Los Angeles, residents say they hear the rapid-fire shots from such weapons almost nightly, and gang members say the guns are so abundant that they can be bought cheaply on the street from cocaine addicts.

Marvin Jones, 70, has had enough. After living for more than 25 years on Kansas Avenue near Vernon Avenue, he has hung a “For Sale” sign on his bullet-pocked apartment house. His old brown Chevrolet in front of the building is punctured with holes from bullets that went in one side of the vehicle and out the other; the windows have also been blown out.

Jones does not know why it happened. His car looked like someone else’s, he guessed.

“If we can get it sold,” he said of his apartment house, “we’re going to get the hell out of here.”

Hail of Bullets

Salvador Saucedo of East Compton and his 6-year-old daughter Irma were not as lucky as Jones. They died last May in a hail of bullets that ripped through the stucco walls of their home when an alleged gang member opened fire on the house with an AK-47.

There are some “hard-core” gang members, a young Crip told The Times, who will fire assault weapons into a crowd without compunction or feeling if they think they might hit an enemy along with the innocent bystanders.

“They say, ‘I spray from babies to eighties.’ ”