Parents Plead for Passage of Gun Law : Legislation: Families of two teen-agers killed in accidental shootings urge Gov. Pete Wilson to sign bill that would require handgun buyers to take a safety course or test before taking possession.

They had little else in common, except that their teen-aged children were killed by guns.

And, on Friday, Leonila and Tony Pacheco, a Mira Mesa paving contractor whose 13-year-old daughter was accidentally killed by a shotgun blast at the hands of a classmate, and Marianne McDonald, a Rancho Santa Fe philanthropist whose 15-year-old daughter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, together asked Gov. Pete Wilson to sign legislation mandating handgun safety courses.

The two spoke at a press conference sponsored by the San Diego Committee Against Handgun Violence, which is lobbying Wilson to sign AB 618. The bill would require handgun buyers to take a two-to-four-hour handgun safety course or pass a safety test before taking possession of the weapon.

The same bill was vetoed by then-Gov. George Deukmejian in May, 1990. Wilson, who has until Oct. 13 to veto the law before it goes into effect, has not yet declared his position on the bill.

“We ask for tests for getting a driver’s license--we ask people to be educated before they drive, and we ask that people get a test for a hunting license,” McDonald said. “But, when it comes to protecting our own children, we have groups like the National Rifle Assn. opposing it, and this is insanity.”

The mandatory gun safety course might educate handgun owners so that fewer weapons would get in the hands of children, argue supporters of the legislation.

McDonald said the bill “won’t be a panacea, but there’s nothing it can harm. It doesn’t take away any liberties, it doesn’t violate any person’s rights. They can have this test at the same place they purchase the gun. There should be no objection to it.”

Brian Judy, the NRA’s chief spokesman in Sacramento, said the organization opposes the legislation because it would cause a bureaucratic and fiscal nightmare for the state’s Department of Justice, which would be required to administer the safety classes.

Moreover, he said, the requirement for taking a handgun safety course should not be compared to a driver’s or hunter’s license.

“Driving and hunting are privileges. Gun ownership is a right,” he said.

“You have to take tests and get licensed to drive a car on public roads, and you have to take a hunter’s safety course to hunt on public lands. But you don’t have to undergo such a test to buy a rifle to hunt, or be tested to buy a car, and you shouldn’t have to be tested--and essentially licensed--to possess a firearm in your own personal home,” Judy said.

Gun owners should know through common sense, and not through mandated education courses, to keep weapons away from children, Judy said.

“If you’re stupid enough to leave a

gun out for a child, I don’t see that sitting through a two-hour course is going to do much for you,” he said.

The state Department of Justice is opposed to the bill, said Pat Kennedy, assistant attorney general in the department’s legislative unit.

He said it would cost $965,000 to set up and administer the safety courses for the first year and that such funding is not included in the legislation, authored by Assemblyman Rusty Areias (D-Salinas).

Without start-up funding, the Department of Justice, which is required to establish the handgun education program, would be unable to offer the courses, thereby effectively prohibiting persons from buying handguns because they wouldn’t be able to meet the gun safety requirement, he said.

He said the department hadn’t decided whether to support or oppose the legislation on philosophical grounds.

At Friday’s press conference, McDonald, a major benefactor to a prestigious La Jolla drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic that bears the family name, pointed out that 85 children have been shot by handguns in California--including 43 who were killed--since Deukemejian vetoed the measure 18 months ago.

Her daughter, Kirstie McDonald, shot herself in the stomach with a .44-caliber handgun at her brother’s Encinitas home last April. Toxicology tests conducted by the county Medical Examiner’s office showed that there were traces of the hallucinogenic drug LSD in her system, and it classified the cause of her death--originally considered suicide--as undetermined.

Leonila and Tony Pacheco’s daughter, Barbara, was shot and killed in October, 1989, when a classmate at Challenger Junior High School in Mira Mesa was playing with a shotgun at his home, which discharged. The blast hit the teen-age girl, who was about 6 feet away.

“I know there’s nothing we can do for our daughter, but, with this law, we can save other children’s lives,” said Leonila Pacheco.

Tony Pacheco conceded he isn’t sure that his daughter would not have been killed if the father of the boy who shot her had taken a gun class.

“I really don’t know (if such a course) would have prevented my daughter’s death,” he said. “It’s hard to determine that. I’m just trying to persuade parents to feel more responsibility towards guns.”

Also speaking was San Diego Police homicide Detective Dick Toneck, who offered, “After seeing the devastation that (handguns) cause, a law such as this that requires nothing more than knowledge of weapons seems ludicrous not to be passed.

“Maybe then a person will think twice before laying the gun down where a child can get ahold of it, or a teen-ager can take it and blow their head off,” he said.