A Gun Law to Be Proud Of

Today, California begins full implementation of the landmark series of firearms regulations that will ban the sale of military-style assault weapons and take practical steps to keep guns of any sort out of the hands of criminals, the distraught and the deranged.

Beginning today, the sale of about 60 specified semiautomatic weapons is prohibited. Californians already in possession of such weapons must register them by next Tuesday. On that day, the state also will impose a 15-day waiting period between the purchase of any firearm and its delivery.

Enactment of these vital new laws was a wrenching process, whose success owes much to the particular political courage demonstrated by state Sen. David Roberti and Assembly members Mike Roos and Lloyd Connelly.

Passage of similar federal legislation awaits an equal display of spine by those national leaders--like President George Bush and Speaker of the House Tom Foley--who continue to cower before the threats of the professional gun lobby.

Proponents of rational firearms regulation--The Times among them--do not disparage the right of hunters, marksmen and other shooting enthusiasts to engage in their wholly legitimate pursuits. We do, however, firmly oppose the indiscriminate production and sale of firearms whose only purpose is to facilitate criminality and the destruction of human life.

Advocates of sensible gun laws esteem the Second Amendment no less than the others enumerated in the Bill of Rights. But that respect will not sustain the willfully ahistorical reading of the Constitution promoted by the fundamentalist fringe of the gun lobby. The practical regulation of specific types of firearms is supported by a line of judicial and legislative precedents stretching back to the early decades of this century. At that time, a Congress concerned with the depredations of racketeers and market hunters banned submachine guns and limited the size of magazines in shotguns used to take migratory water fowl. Confronted with the murderous destruction of Uzis and AK-47s, can we not afford our own children the protection an earlier generation extended to ducks?