COUNTYWIDE : Deadline to Register Guns Brings Deluge

Owners of assault weapons in Ventura County, facing a state deadline to register their guns by the end of the year, flooded local law enforcement agencies with so many requests for registration applications that three police departments ran out of forms, officials said this week.

Under a new state law, owners were required to register the weapons or turn them over to law enforcement agencies before midnight Monday. There were so many requests that the Oxnard, Ventura and Simi Valley police departments ran out of applications.

Only the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and the Santa Paula and Port Hueneme police departments still had applications Monday afternoon. None of the departments reported any weapons turned in.

Public interest in the weapons registration was slight until last week, averaging 25 to 30 phone inquiries per day to the firearms unit of the Justice Department in Sacramento, said Jay Johnston, manager of the state Justice Department’s automated systems program. Friday, however, 625 calls came in, he said.

By Monday afternoon, the department had received about 12,000 applications and was expecting 3,000 more before the deadline, Johnston said.

The number of assault weapons in California has been estimated at 300,000, but local officials did not have an estimate for Ventura County.

Johnston said that under the law failure to register an assault weapon can be prosecuted as a felony, a misdemeanor or an infraction depending upon the circumstances. An infraction would carry a fine of $350 and confiscation of the weapon.

Ventura County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee said all cases in Ventura County would be handled individually. “We will vigorously enforce the law,” McGee said. “If a felony was appropriate, we would prosecute it as that.”