COUNTYWIDE : Gun Owners Up in Arms Over Release

A group of Orange County gun owners rallied outside the Orange County Courthouse on Monday to protest the release of a mentally ill transient who was convicted of a weapons charge after being found on the roof of an Anaheim school with a loaded assault rifle.

About 25 members of the Gun Owners REACT Committee, an anti-gun-control organization, picketed outside the courthouse while Robert L. Houston, 26, faced a pretrial hearing inside on a new weapons charge.

Houston, who was released in December, 1989, after serving less than a year in prison for the Anaheim incident, was arrested earlier this month at an Orange post office by an undercover police officer who had trailed him because of a parole violation, police said. During a search, the officer found a loaded and cocked .380-caliber handgun in Houston’s gym bag, police said.

Houston’s hearing was continued to next month.

“I’ve got two children who go to school in Orange,” said Kevin Wagner, a member of REACT and a gun dealer. “They should put people like him away for good and not have him roam the streets like he did. I just about fainted when I heard about him being arrested at the post office.”

Wagner and other members of REACT compared Houston to Patrick Purdy, who killed five children and wounded 29 other children and a teacher in Stockton with an assault rifle in January, 1989. But they added that gun-control laws are not the answer to preventing criminals and mentally ill people from purchasing guns.

“Criminals like Houston and Purdy give all gun owners a bad name,” Wagner said.

A year after the Stockton slayings, the California Legislature passed the nation’s first law requiring a 15-day waiting period on the purchase of recreational rifles and shotguns. The law also prohibits people convicted of gun-related misdemeanors from buying shotguns and rifles for at least five years.

Michael McNulty, a REACT spokesman, said such laws do not work because the “justice system doesn’t keep criminals in jail.”

“These people should not be allowed loose on the streets,” McNulty said. “We’re not in the mood to hear that guns are the problem. The focus should be on the people, not on the (AK-47 assault rifles).”

Luis Tolley, the western director for Handgun Control Inc., a gun-control advocacy group, said the REACT rally was a “publicity stunt.”

“It appears as if they are trying to shift attention from the major part of the problem with guns, which is easy access,” Tolley said in an interview. “Prevention means not only making sure people serve full jail sentences but also making sure that people can’t buy an AK-47 rifle or an Uzi right off the streets.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Anderson, who is prosecuting Houston on the latest charge of felony firearm possession, said Houston had been sentenced to two years in state prison for the Anaheim incident, which occurred in 1988. But Houston was released 11 months later because he had been in custody during court proceedings.

“The prison system did keep him longer than your ordinary, run-of-the-mill inmate,” Anderson said.

Local police began tracking Houston this year after he failed to report to parole authorities after his release from Atascadero State Hospital last December.

If convicted on the latest weapons charge, Houston could serve four years, as well as an additional year for the parole violation.