Gun Owners Ignoring Law on Registration

Owners of hundreds of thousands of military-style assault guns in California are holding onto their weapons and not registering them in what an official of the National Rifle Assn. characterized Tuesday as a massive demonstration of civil disobedience.

Under an 18-month-old statute that all but outlawed such firearms, owners of legally acquired Uzis, AK-47s, AR-15s and other exotic semiautomatics must register them by Dec. 31 or face a stiff fine or possible criminal penalties.

Since the law was signed by Gov. George Deukmejian, only 5,150 out of approximately 300,000 such guns believed to be owned by Californians have been registered with the state Department of Justice.

Although a last-minute rush to register is possible, “I think it is pretty obvious that there is non-compliance with the law,” said Robert Drake, a bureau chief in the department’s division of law enforcement. “Enforcement is not our job. Enforcement is a local issue.”

However, local authorities, who will be called on to enforce the registration law, said they do not intend to launch extraordinary efforts to find and prosecute violators.

In Washington, Richard Gardiner, who led the NRA’s unsuccessful fight to kill the assault weapons bill in the California Legislature, said he believes that as the deadline approaches “there is going to be massive civil disobedience” by gun owners.

“According to all the surveys, nine out of 10 citizens believe they have a constitutional right to own firearms and they are going to exercise that right,” Gardiner said. “People are not going to take (unregistered) guns out on the street and try to get themselves arrested. (But) a lot of people are going to quietly keep the guns in the hope that the law will be either invalidated or repealed.”

Gardiner said the NRA does not advise its members to obey or disobey the law. “We tell them that we believe it is unconstitutional. We leave it to them to choose what they want to do. If someone chooses to disobey the law, civil disobedience is a moral decision that each must make for himself.”

Historically, many gun owners, even so-called moderates, have viewed registration as the first step toward the unthinkable: confiscation of their firearms.

The law gave owners of legally obtained assault weapons 18 months, or until this Dec. 31, to register them. Failure to do so is punishable by an infraction fine of $350 on the first offense. Subsequent violations may be treated as a misdemeanor or felony, including jail terms.

Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles), authors of the statute, expressed disappointment that the registration requirement is apparently being ignored.

“Civil disobedience is fine, but it is going to be expensive,” Roberti said.

Said Roos: “It’s just amazing to me that an organization, and Gardiner himself, who have been suggesting that we get tougher with people who break the law, should now be so cavalier with a law they don’t believe in.”

Among other things, the law made it illegal as of last Jan. 1 to sell, transfer, import, loan, manufacture, distribute or give away about 60 types of military-style assault guns, including semiautomatic rifles, pistols and shotguns.

For Californians who already legally owned these weapons--estimated by the NRA and the state Department of Justice at about 300,000--the law created a heavily publicized, first-ever firearms registration system.

There is no statewide policy that governs how the registration requirements will be enforced. But in a series of interviews, officials of several local and statewide law enforcement organizations indicated that police chiefs and sheriffs intend to establish similar local policies.

These officials agreed that no special effort would be made to enforce the new law and that citations would be incidental to another offense or citizen complaint.

“We are not going to go out and create a task force of any kind,” said Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Fred Nixon. “We anticipate that in the course of some other kind of investigation that occasionally we will become aware of failure to register the weapon. In those instances, we will, of course, take the weapon into custody and then request the appropriate criminal filing.”

In Northern California, Lt. Lyle Shores of the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department said domestic disputes and divorce cases may provide the best incidental leads to unregistered weapons.

“You never know what you are going to stumble over,” Shores said. “If you get called to a domestic fight, the wife may tell you all the things the husband has that he isn’t supposed to have, or vice versa.”

In a case that may end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, the NRA failed late last summer to persuade a federal judge in Fresno to strike down the assault weapons law as unconstitutional. The NRA has asked that the ruling be reconsidered.