The Best Gun Laws We Can Expect Aren’t Much

‘You do appreciate that it’s time to stop shooting people, is that correct?” Superior Court Judge Robert Fitzgerald asked the defendant in accepting his guilty plea to a murder in the second degree.

The defendant, Richard Bourassa Jr., said that he did. He’d already shot and killed two boys who had considered him their friend. The killings, four years apart, took place under the guise of boys just being that, of playing around with Daddy’s gun.

Bourassa is 18 years old now. He was a student at Canyon High School in Anaheim Hills. Now he will likely go to jail big time.

Two weeks ago, two more boys were horsing around with a gun that went off. Marcos Antonio Lara is dead because of that. He was shot in the head by his friend, Francisco Mejia, who is 13 years old.

Marcos Antonio, who had lived at home with his family in Santa Ana, will never go beyond 13 years old.

Such killings go on all the time. I have written about them before.

One that sticks out in my mind is that which took the life of Jacalyn Calabrese, who never made it out of junior high. Her friend, Juan Cardenas, was 12 years old when he shot her dead, during a Christmas shopping trip to the Mall of Orange in December of 1989.

Bang to the forehead. They said it was an accident, once again.

These killings still make the news because the horror factor, although dwindling, is there. The near-misses are in the media much less. The numbers are large enough so that averages can be figured, percentages chalked up, much like they do in sports.

On average, one child is accidentally shot to death in the United States every day. For every child killed, 10 are seriously hurt.

These shootings are all attributed to people who say that they didn’t intend to do harm. Many of them are kids just playing around. We have an idea in this country that guns are pretty fun.

There’s a bill before the California Legislature that would hold parents criminally liable if their child shoots somebody with the parent’s gun. Florida, Connecticut and Iowa already have such a law on the books. Maryland and Wisconsin are considering ones as well.

Under the California proposal, an adult who leaves a gun within reach of a child under the age of 14 could be booked on a misdemeanor or felony charge.

The bill, co-sponsored by Democratic Assemblymen Tom Umberg of Garden Grove and Lloyd Connelly of Sacramento, just passed the Public Safety Committee on an unanimous vote. The National Rifle Assn. approves of the legislation, which politically speaking, is a plus.

“We might even get it to the governor now,” says Gene Erbin, counsel for the Assembly Subcommittee on the Administration of Justice. “Without the NRA, it would be holy war.”

As it is, the war now is just undeclared. Young bodies keep piling up while ideologues argue about why this might be so.

Where you stand on guns and the Second Amendment--and what a “well-regulated militia” really means--has become some sort of Rosetta stone for deciphering one’s political mind. You are either on the left or on the right--no waffling, please--and then depending on which box you check, either in the right or hopelessly in the wrong.

The issue has become so polarized that “united fronts” have taken over the debate, the politics so heated that people can rarely argue them without getting red in the face.

Because, of course, there is so much at stake.

We are talking about life and death--yours or mine or the kid down the street’s. These are people you know and people you love.

We are also talking about government further restricting what its citizens can and cannot do. Many Americans don’t like that much at all.

So let me arbitrarily establish some common ground.

I’ll assume that most people do not want to see children, or any other innocent, killed. I’ll assume that most people think only law-abiding citizens should have access to guns.

I’ll assume that most agreement, in the very broadest terms, stops about there.

What that leaves is an ideological street brawl over everything else. Sometimes mealy-mouthed compromises make it into law. “This is better than nothing,” is what I hear.

And I suppose that this is true.

Living in a democracy often means accepting less than one would like, for the so-called good of all. The Children’s Firearm Accident Prevention Act of 1991, as the Umberg-Connelly bill is called, is a modest proposal for regaining some sanity about guns and the law. It has holes.

Were the law in place, Tom Baldwin, Richard Bourassa’s stepfather, the man whose guns were used to kill two boys, could not be prosecuted in connection with the death of Christian Wiedepuhl. Richard was three years older than the 14-year-old age limit when the killing took place last year.

The drafters of the accident-prevention bill say the 14-year-old limit is founded in common sense. These days prosecutors have a tough time convincing juries that a parent can really control their 15-year-old kid.

As it happened, Tom Baldwin’s right to bear arms has never been infringed in any way. And here in California--where legal gun buyers must submit to a 15-day wait--the gun laws are considered “tough.”

Even after his stepson killed 13-year-old Jeffrey Bush in 1986, Tom Baldwin went to the Anaheim police station to pick up his 12-gauge shotgun and .22-caliber rifle and was handed them back. This is legal.

And no gun locks were used. This is legal too. Since Florida passed its 1989 law making it illegal to leave firearms unsecured, two people have been sentenced and another charged in that state.

Law enforcement officials there say they believe the legislation has cut down on the number of accidental shootings and deaths. Gun shop owners report large sales of firearm locks.

Wish that it would happen here. If the killings won’t stop, at least let them be fewer and far between.

It is better than nothing. Which, so far, is the best that we can expect.