Senate Kills Bill to Ban Carrying of Loaded Gun

Defeated in the earlier all-out battle to ban semiautomatic assault weapons, the National Rifle Assn. won a victory Wednesday when the Senate voted against a bill to make it a felony to carry a loaded gun in a public place.

The action occurred as last spring’s unusual fervor to overcome the NRA showed clear signs of cooling in the face of a second wave of gun control bills heading toward final votes.

“Enough is enough,” Sen. Robert B. Presley (D-Riverside) said. “We need more time to evaluate the impact of what we did with assault rifles . . . (before) we rush headlong into something that needs careful consideration.”

Presley’s declaration reflected the sentiments of several other Senate Democrats, most of them rural legislators who had voted to ban assault guns but voiced concern about going any further.

Additionally, there is talk in the Senate that the gun control pendulum may be swinging back the other way. Gun control advocates cautiously voiced hope that they will prevail, but narrowly.

The rejected bill would have made it a felony on the second offense to carry a loaded firearm in incorporated cities, punishable by a state prison term. Currently, first and subsequent offenses are misdemeanors.

Author Blames NRA

The author, Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles), characterized the bill as an “anti-gang” measure sought by big city police. He blamed the defeat on the NRA, which opposed the bill.

It failed on a 14-19 vote, but Friedman said he will attempt to revive the measure by amending it to make a second offense punishable either as a misdemeanor or a felony at the discretion of the judge.

Friedman’s bill represented the first casualty of the apparently hardening attitude in the Senate against what the NRA and other gun owners organizations see as a take-no-prisoners assault on firearms.

During debate, Sen. Henry J. Mello (D-Watsonville), who usually votes for heavier criminal penalties, called the Friedman bill “another step in trying to punish persons who have guns.”

Another rural legislator, Sen. Barry Keene (D-Benicia), voiced concern that otherwise law-abiding constituents in his North Coast district who carry loaded guns “might well be arrested for what they have been doing for generations.”

“It has really tightened up in the Senate in the past three days,” acknowledged Luis Tolley, California director of operations for Handgun Control Inc. “The NRA has been a bully and we hope the legislators will stand up and not let themselves be intimidated.”

The NRA, while seriously injured by the assault weapons ban, appears to be regrouping and is busy alerting its approximately 280,000 California members of the dangers it sees in the pending bills as the Legislature heads toward adjournment.

Leading its list of targets is a proposal by Assemblyman Lloyd G. Connelly (D-Sacramento) to extend the existing 15-day waiting period on the purchase of handguns to hunting rifles and shotguns. The bill also would make it more difficult for the mentally impaired to obtain firearms and require that private sales of guns go through a dealer and be subject to the waiting period.

The waiting period for rifles and shotguns was called for last winter by Gov. George Deukmejian in the wake of the slaying of five children in a Stockton schoolyard by a crazed rifleman. The Connelly bill is scheduled for an expected close vote in the Senate today.

A second bill cited by the NRA would outlaw high capacity ammunition magazines and generally restrict the number of rounds in such magazines to 15. Both sides rate its chances at about 50-50.