Campaign Targets Gun Safety for Youth

Citing an alarming increase in the number of children and teen-agers across the country being killed or wounded, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and a national crime prevention group on Wednesday encouraged handgun safety and announced a series of nationwide television public service messages in an effort to curb the growing violence.

The police chief also said that some parents should be criminally prosecuted if they do not keep their guns out of the reach of children.

He chastised the National Rifle Assn. for opposing restrictions on the purchase of semiautomatic assault rifles. “That’s just b.s. they tried to present to the American public,” the chief said, adding that the assault rifle is another weapon designed to kill people.

Gates said that the number of children killed by guns has increased 97% nationwide since 1984.

The chief, however, stopped short of calling for stricter gun controls. Noting that he has been a lifetime gun owner and has raised children of his own, he urged more gun safety and training programs to educate adults on how to protect their children from harming themselves with firearms.

He also suggested that new gun purchasers be required to attend firearm safety and training classes, much as teen-agers do to obtain driving licenses. “I am for any kind of education in buying a gun,” he said.

Guns are the fifth-leading cause of accidental death for children 14 and younger, according to figures released Wednesday by the Los Angeles Police Department and the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, a nonprofit research organization in Washington formed to educate the public about the risks and responsibilities of handgun ownership.

The National School Safety Center estimated that 400,000 boys carried guns to school in 1987, and the National Center for Justice Statistics said tens of thousands of youngsters are assaulted every year by youths with guns.

In Los Angeles, police said, 471 of the 874 homicide victims last year were killed by handguns. Ninety-nine of the victims were under 17 years old; 20 were under 10.

The Police Department said it seized about 10,500 firearms last year, 75% of them handguns.

To dramatize the statistics, Gates described the “very tragic” incident on Tuesday when a 4-year-old boy shot and killed himself while playing with a loaded pistol in his Los Angeles home, despite his mother’s efforts to coax the weapon away from the child.

“That kind of accident happens over and over and over again, not only in this city but across the country,” the chief said.

In the 30-second television spots, which will begin airing here and across the nation in the coming weeks, Gates is seen in his uniform, warning about the danger of guns, particularly when they fall into the hands of teen-agers and children.

In one segment, the chief waves a police report describing a child shot accidentally by a playmate. In another, he tells the story of two school friends who play basketball together and carry handguns in their gym bags; one ends up dead, the other in a wheelchair.

Mike Horan, an LAPD firearms instructor, said gun safety is one of the first lessons taught to police recruits, and some recruits learn to use cables and padlocks to secure their weapons from misfiring at home. He said many officers and gun owners store their weapons in lockboxes that fit underneath their beds, where they are secure but handy if needed.

“That way you can simply reach under the bed,” he said, “pull out the drawer, unlock the box, and you have your weapon.”

In a telephone interview, Leroy Pyle, an NRA national board member and San Jose police officer, defended the gun owners’ lobby in its efforts against bans on assault rifles. He also said that the NRA works harder than any other organization in the country on gun safety, and that the association has enlisted 25,000 instructors who teach safety to 800,000 people each year.