Committee OKs Bill to Ban Most Assault Guns

The Assembly Ways and Means Committee cleared the path Wednesday for the Legislature to take a big step next week toward declaring California off-limits to military-style assault weapons.

Over Republican opposition, the Democrat-dominated committee approved, 12 to 5, and sent to the full Assembly the Senate version of a bill to ban most semiautomatic combat firearms of the type that street gangsters and other criminals favor.

The full Assembly is expected to consider the bill by Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) on Monday morning. Then later in the day, the Senate plans to vote on a virtually identical bill by Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles).

Republican Gov. George Deukmejian has indicated he would sign a bill outlawing semiautomatic combat weapons. For years, the governor had been an opponent of gun controls but he announced his opposition to assault rifles two days after one was used on Jan. 17 to kill five children on a Stockton school playground.

Sets Conditions

Deukmejian has said any bill he signs must be clear and draw a distinction between assault guns and standard hunting or sporting firearms.

Roberti told the Ways and Means Committee that he had been in “close contact” with assistants to the governor and they “have indicated to me a favorable attitude on this legislation.”

Roos and Roberti earlier had said the technical differences between the two bills probably would be reconciled by a Senate-Assembly conference committee, which would fashion the final product that goes to Deukmejian. But both legislators suggested in recent days that agreement might be reached on one bill or the other without having to go to conference.

Meantime, a group of gun owners, counseled by former Sen. H. L. Richardson (R-Glendora), the leading advocate of the right to own firearms while he was in the Legislature, mapped plans to mount an 11th-hour protest Monday against the legislation.

Richardson said he told the organizer of the proposed “grass-roots” demonstration, Thomas F. Metzger, publisher of a small conservative newspaper in the Sierra foothill community of Placerville, to lobby in force inside the Capitol.

“Inside, you band together in groups, go office to office and crowd up the halls to let (legislators) know you are there,” he said he advised Metzger. “They really know you mean something if you show up.”

Metzger said he had received calls from anxious gun owners throughout Northern California asking what could be done to defeat the legislation. He said he consulted Richardson and decided upon a lobbying effort in the Capitol rather than a rally outside.

Metzger said the gun owners intend “to talk to some people who need their tail twisted a little bit to get them to vote the proper way.” He refused to estimate how many people will participate Monday other than to say, “It’s going to be a lot more than 50.”

Richardson said the effort will concentrate on the Assembly, which last month passed Roos’ version of the bill without a vote to spare. The Senate is considered more receptive to the gun ban.

Intent of Measure

Starting Jan. 1, the legislation would make it a felony to manufacture, import, sell or lend about 60 models of rifles, shotguns and pistols that the bill lists as assault weapons. Violators could be sent to prison for up to 12 years.

The bills would establish a registration system for owners of such guns who acquired them legally before June 1 of this year. These owners would have until 1991 to pay an unspecified fee and register them with the state Department of Justice. Illegal possession of such a gun would be punishable by up to three years in prison.

Possession of the assault guns generally would be restricted to the owner’s home or business and at legitimate target ranges, state-licensed shooting clubs and certain exhibitions.