Gun Permits Issued to a Select, Targeted Few : Protection: The number of residents approved to carry concealed weapons is down 90% from 1975.

The congressman can carry a gun. So can three Ventura County judges and the district attorney. An Ojai artist, a free-lance journalist and actor Tom Selleck are also among the array of county residents who can legally carry a concealed weapon.

Many are granted that privilege by local police because their lives have been threatened. Others consider themselves targets because of the nature of their work.

“I’m still under a sentence of death,” said Municipal Judge Lee E. Cooper Jr., referring to an edict from an obscure radical group in the 1970s.

“I’ve been threatened any number of times,” said Cooper, whose gun permit dates to the 1960s. “I choose to feel free to go where I want to go when I want to go without worrying about who I might encounter.”

But Ventura County is hardly a throwback to the gun-toting days of the Wild West.

The county’s 177 permits issued to citizens who want to pack a pistol or have one in their car is less than one-third the average for California counties, and it is only a fraction of the state high of 4,161 reported by Kern County for 1989. That means Kern County issues one permit for every 129 people, compared to a permit for every 3,729 in this county.

The 177 permits represent a 90% reduction for Ventura County since 1975, said local police agencies, which have embraced a philosophy that the fewer guns on the streets the better--even if they are carried by law-abiding citizens.

The Sheriff’s Department, which distributes the bulk of the county permits, said it has cut the number it has issued from 2,000 to 156 over the last 15 years during the administrations of Al Jalaty and John Gillespie.

“Times have changed, laws have changed, philosophies have changed,” said Gillespie, sheriff since 1983. “In years past, they were issued just because somebody asked. We’ve discouraged people who just want a gun permit for prestige, so they can say, ‘I’m special.’ ”

Another reason gun permits are down, police said, is that some applicants have been deterred by a 1986 California Supreme Court ruling that made the names of permit holders public.

Sheriffs and police chiefs can grant gun permits, valid throughout the state, if those applying are of good character and show a “good cause” to carry a weapon, according to state law.

All five city police chiefs in the county are far more restrictive than the state requires. In fact, police departments in Simi Valley, Ventura, Santa Paula and Port Hueneme report no more than two permits each. Oxnard has issued 14.

Police chiefs and Gillespie all say they will not grant gun permits, which must be renewed annually, unless a real danger can be demonstrated.

“When you tell a citizen he has the right to carry a concealed weapon in a public place, you are lending your office to him, and there needs to be a very good reason for that,” said Walter H. Adair, chief of the Santa Paula department.

In Oxnard, Chief Robert Owens said: “The ones who most often approach me are businesses that deal with cash and stay open late at night.” Owens said he tells them to hire security guards or arrange for armored-car services. “They have to show a real problem, not a perceived one,” he said.

Before permits are granted, applicants must prove at a firing range that they are proficient with a handgun, police chiefs said.

Local departments, except Ventura’s, also require insurance to cover civil liability in case a permit holder shoots someone. The amount of insurance ranges from $100,000 required by the Sheriff’s Department to $1 million by Santa Paula, officials said.

Police chiefs said they could recall no shooting incident involving a permit holder. But Owens said he refused to renew one permit when a local businessman showed his pistol at a party and “somebody got offended.”

Concealed weapons are legally carried in the county by citizens ranging from a Moorpark homemaker, who was the victim of an assault and fears another, to Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura), who said he has been threatened more times than he wants to remember.

“I don’t carry a gun around, but I like to be able to if the need arises,” Lagomarsino said.

Gillespie said the renewal of the congressman’s permit is an easy call each year. “I’ve been to places where he was speaking, and there were radical placard-carrying people out front who would just as soon hit him in the head as anything,” the sheriff said.

Gun dealers, retired military officers and security-company managers have numerous weapons permits. So do doctors, pharmacists, airline pilots and entertainment-industry talent scouts, managers and bodyguards, the sheriff reports.

An actor such as Selleck, a Hidden Valley resident who was issued a permit last summer, “automatically brings some fanatics,” Gillespie said. “He had some problems. We’re talking security for his home and his family as well as himself.”

A Camarillo grocer, an Oxnard dentist, a Santa Paula rancher, a Thousand Oaks mortician and a Fillmore bar owner also have been issued permits by the sheriff.

Port Hueneme Councilman Ken Hess holds a permit because of concerns for safety, and three assistants to Oxnard developer Martin V. Smith are licensed to carry firearms because of threats against them, police chiefs said.

Simi Valley police issued their sole permit in October to a man who transports firearms and also surveys remote mountaintops as sites for transmitters, Police Chief Lindsey P. Miller said.

Even that permit is restricted, Miller said. The holder cannot take a gun into a restaurant or bar. “It isn’t a pet to carry around with him all the time,” he said.

Assistant Sheriff Oscar Fuller, who reviews permit requests for his department, said he always keeps in mind that people have a right to protection.

“I’m not suggesting that we should return to the frontier days,” he said, “but there are situations where we’re not able to provide the kind of protection they need.”

Several permit holders work odd hours in isolated areas where the sheriff is not likely to patrol, Fuller said. For example, a Camarillo sod farm manager got a permit because he works nights and has to defend his property from theft, Fuller said.

Lawyers, especially high-profile prosecutors and defense attorneys, hold more gun permits than people in any other profession.

Threats are part of his job, said Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury. He has had a permit since the 1970s and is authorized to carry a .357 magnum. But Bradbury said he has never been forced to use it.

Four other county prosecutors are licensed to carry guns, as are three Municipal Court jurists--Commissioner John Paventi and Judges Cooper and Herbert Curtis III.

Cooper would not say directly whether he carries a gun on the bench. But he added: “I think it would be reasonable for a judge under the appropriate circumstance to do precisely that.”

Bradbury recalled an incident in the 1970s when the late Kenneth Haymaker, a Superior Court commissioner, pulled a weapon during trial.

“It was late in the day, and the lights went out,” Bradbury said. “Before the emergency light came on, he whipped out a gun from his black robes. It looked like a .45. I went over and sat under the light.”

Despite the dark humor, security is a real problem for judges and prosecutors alike, the district attorney said.

There are no nationwide statistics on threats or attacks on prosecutors or judges, but both federal and state judges have been shot and killed while on the bench. And a former Marin County district attorney was murdered in 1986 by a man he had sent to prison for arson 30 years before.

The only shooting in a local courtroom in recent years was a domestic dispute in which a wife fired on her husband, said Sheriff’s Cmdr. John Kingsley, chief of courthouse security. About one pistol and many knives are confiscated in the courthouse each year, he said.

“People need to understand that sometimes these threats are carried out,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Ronald C. Janes said.

A Newbury Park man called Janes last February with threats to kill another county prosecutor, Richard E. Holmes.

The man, Charles Flores, accused Holmes of mishandling the case against two men charged with beating his son to death. “He had been out in the parking lot waiting for Mr. Holmes to come out,” Janes said.

Flores was convicted of the threats and sentenced to five years’ probation. Janes and Holmes, both veteran prosecutors, have concealed-weapon permits. So does a former member of the county grand jury that looked into the Flores case and found Holmes had not bungled the prosecution. The grand juror, Lawrence Johnson, claims that he too was threatened.

“I have five children at home, so I was concerned,” said Johnson, a security guard who was issued a permit by Ventura police. “But I also carry one on the job. It’s like carrying a pencil for me.”

People who hold gun permits said weapons are a precaution. None admitted to firing one in self-defense. Court Commissioner Paventi said he has never been threatened even though he convicted 13 people of murder while a prosecutor.

“Those people are all in state prisons, and they’re not happy about that. Neither are their families,” Paventi said. “So it’s a matter of having the resource if I need it.”

CONCEALED WEAPONS PERMITS

By police agency 1983 1990 Sheriff’s Dept. 369 156 Oxnard 38 14 Ventura 7 2 Port Hueneme 3 2 Santa Paula 2 2 Simi Valley -- 1 County Total 432 177