Chief Gates Is Targeted by Gun Lobby

Members of the California gun lobby charged Tuesday that Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and the Los Angeles Police Department are padding their list of assault firearms seized by police in an attempt to bolster the chief’s political standing with gun control advocates.

The chief’s critics, among them officials of the National Rifle Assn. and several California peace officers, maintained that Gates wants to present himself as a friend to liberals who support gun control.

They also charged that Gates plans to use the list, which they said shows an almost 300% increase in assault weapons seized by police, to argue for tougher restrictions on semiautomatic weapons.

“I believe Mr. Gates has some designs and aspirations to go into elective office,” said Michael McNulty, a spokesman for the Gun Owners REACT Committee. “And it appears he has chosen to align himself with the liberal political segment.”

Gates was out of town Tuesday and could not be reached for comment. But his chief spokesman, Cmdr. William Booth, denied that Gates or the department is using the weapons list for any purpose other than administrative bookkeeping.

“There’s no hidden agenda here,” Booth said. “This is a complete misrepresentation of what Gates’ views are. And if someone is claiming he was going to try to mislead the public, it’s a slanderous prediction of what his intent is. He has no intention of misleading anyone.”

The gun lobby officials made the allegations at a morning press conference in Burbank, where they issued statistics on the types of firearms seized by the Police Department over the last year. The data included copies of internal firearm logs kept by the department’s gun detail.

According to McNulty, the figures indicate an almost 300% increase in the assault firearms seized by police. But he noted that while many of the weapons on the list are semiautomatic firearms that were banned by the Legislature last year, others were legal weapons taken by police during criminal investigations.

For example, while the list included numerous assault rifles that Sacramento lawmakers identified in their landmark measure making California the first state to ban military-style assault weapons, the document also listed several firearms that are not banned. These include such guns as the Charter Arms AR-7, used by sportsmen, and the M-1 Garand, which is a collector’s item from World War II.

By keeping such a list, McNulty said, the department can show that the 1989 assault rifle ban does not go far enough to stop the proliferation of assault firearms in the hands of criminals.

Booth, however, said the list has been used for years by the Police Department as an internal gun inventory. He added that Gates has not changed his position on the public’s right to bear arms.

“He is a supporter of the Second Amendment,” Booth said. “He is not an advocate of gun control. Instead, he’s an advocate of not having weapons that were designed to kill people on battlefields, such as these military assault rifles and bazookas and cannons and grenade launchers. Those do not have any legitimate place in civilian ownership.”