PERSPECTIVE ON GUNS : Still Time to Cancel Your Order : The riots have spurred sales, but evidence shows that a loved one is more likely to be killed than an intruder.

I would like to take advantage of the 15-day waiting period required on all handgun sales in California to attempt to dissuade the thousands of Southern Californians who have recently applied to purchase such weapons from going through with their decision.

Buying a handgun for self-defense is simply a bad idea. Yes, there are times when a handgun can be a useful weapon to have. And certainly the scenes of Los Angeles shopkeepers defending their stores with firearms lend powerful ammunition to pro-gun advocates. But the scenes were an aberration. To look at only this one instance and determine that a handgun is useful or even necessary is to take specific events out of context.

In the late 1960s another wave of violent riots swept through America’s inner cities. In response, many surburbanites and others chose to buy handguns. Since then, private firearms ownership has doubled. And this has lead to anything but a safer society.

The riots of 1992 were much bloodier than the Watts riots of 27 years ago. More people were shot to death in this most recent outbreak of violence than were killed in the longer Watts riots.

Today, a black male teen-ager is more likely to be shot to death than to die of natural causes. Our nation’s homicide rate has increased by more than 50% since 1967. Every two years, the number of Americans shot to death surpasses the number of U.S. combat deaths suffered in Vietnam.

All available public-health research indicates that private handgun ownership is a dangerous idea. One study indicates that handguns kept in the home are 43 times more likely to kill the gun’s owner, friend or family member than to kill an intruder.

I know everyone thinks that won’t happen to them. But can you really be so sure? A handgun allows you to become a killer with just the pull of trigger. One finger is all it takes.

For those fixated on the Korean-American merchants defending their stores in Los Angeles, there are a couple of other things to think about.

The only person killed by the shopkeepers was a member of another group of merchants. Apparently the two groups mistook each other for looters.

Potential handgun owners should also recall the surveillance-camera footage from last year of merchant Soon Ja Du shooting 15-year-old Latasha Harlans in the back as she was leaving the store.

Inner-city residents, those who live daily with gun violence, are the most likely to support gun control. A recent gun-control initiative was passed overwhelmingly by Washington, D.C., voters. A 1988 Maryland referendum on banning “Saturday-night specials” would not have passed if it was not for the support the measure received from inner-city wards in Baltimore.

In Southern California, the South-Central Organizing Committee played a pivotal role in lobbying the state Legislature when California became the first state in the nation to ban assault weapons two years ago.

Statistics from the FBI give further evidence of the fallacy of handguns as useful self-defense weapons. In 1990, 11,700 Americans were murdered with handguns. Of these, only 215 were determined to be justifiable--that is, self-defense killings.

The failure of our government to recognize and act on the problems of the inner cities has resulted in record levels of violence as evidenced not just by the riots, but by everyday life. During the average four-day period, six or seven Los Angeles residents are shot and killed.

This is not the space to address the ways in which government and individuals should restore vitality to urban America. Suffice it to say, however, that the best way to address these problems is not with a handgun.

I urge all of you who have begun the process of buying a firearm to reconsider.