Gun Registration Provision Concerns Governor

Gov. George Deukmejian said Monday that he is concerned that a gun registration provision in legislation to ban assault weapons could subject law-abiding Californians to prosecution as felons.

“I certainly don’t think that a law-abiding citizen who may neglect or choose not to register the gun should be found guilty or subject to a felony prosecution,” Deukmejian said.

It was the first time he has spelled out why he asked last Wednesday that expected final passage of the controversial bill be held up.

At a press conference after a speech to the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, Deukmejian insisted that he has not contracted a case of cold feet and still will sign such a bill provided that it is clear and separates military-style semiautomatic assault weapons from traditional hunting and sporting firearms.

He asked Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), author of the measure, to delay a Senate vote so he can study its contents. Roberti agreed. The Senate leader says the proposal may come for the expected final vote next week.

In California, registration of firearms historically has been considered tantamount to confiscation by many gun owners. Handguns, technically, have been registered with the state for years.

The assault gun ban, basically, would outlaw the manufacture, sale and, for the most part, civilian possession of about 60 semiautomatic rifles, pistols and shotguns effective Jan. 1.

Deukmejian told reporters Monday that registration of assault weapons by owners who obtain them legally by June 1 “is one of the problems.”

Under the bill, illegal possession effective next Jan. 1 would be punishable either as a misdemeanor with up to one year in jail or as a felony carrying a longer sentence in state prison.

Failure to register the guns proposed to be outlawed would be considered illegal possession. Owners of assault weapons could keep them if they registered the firearms with the state Department of Justice by Jan. 1.

Deukmejian said that the legal owner of such a weapon, “someone who has never done anything wrong,” should not be faced with prosecution.

“The idea behind any legislation like this is to get at the criminal and not the law-abiding citizen,” Deukmejian said.

Deukmejian, who cleared the path for a ban on assault weapons in January two days after the slayings of five Stockton schoolchildren by a demented drifter armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, said he has other concerns about the two nearly identical bills by Roberti and Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles).

In less specific terms, the governor said he is troubled by provisions of the legislation that would seek to outlaw the manufacture of guns that were cosmetic imitations of those that would be outlawed. He said these features are “subject to some different interpretations.”

On a separate subject, Deukmejian told the Chamber of Commerce that if U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson wins the 1990 race for governor, he has no plans to seek to replace Wilson in the Senate.

If Wilson wins the governor’s race, he would be empowered to appoint his successor in Washington.

But Deukmejian, as he has before, said he has no interest in replacing Wilson and added, “My intention now is I’m going to get away from public life and into the private sector.”

Later, Deukmejian said Armenian-Americans have a “special obligation” to inform other Americans of the Armenian genocide that occurred in 1915 when about 1.5 million Armenians perished at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

In remarks during a Martyrs Day commemorative ceremony, Deukmejian, the nation’s foremost officeholder of Armenian ancestry, charged that the continued denial of the massacres and the “obliteration of Armenian cultural landmarks demonstrates the lengths to which Turkey is willing to go to rid itself of anything having to do with the Armenian people.”

“As descendants of a people who suffered terrible injustice and also as citizens of this great land of liberty, we have a special obligation to inform our fellow countrymen of what can happen when freedom is abridged and tyranny imposed,” Deukmejian said.