Gun Control and Brady Bill

We at C.O.P.S. (California Organization for Public Safety) can’t believe you’re still writing editorials supporting the Roberti-Roos “assault weapons” ban (“Assault on Sanity,” Nov. 18), legislation founded on the lie that certain semiautomatic firearms needed to be banned because they were allegedly the weapons of choice of gangbangers and drug dealers.

A Times article (May 20) presented the truth: “ ‘These kinds of guns don’t play a large role in violent crime and they never have,’ said Steve Helsely, assistant director of the state’s Division of Law Enforcement. Of the fatal shootings investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department’s South Bureau homicide unit in 1990 and 1991, less than 2% involved assault weapons, records show. . . . Nor are assault weapons prevalent among drug dealers, Helsely said. Of 1,979 guns seized in 1990 by state narcotics agents, he said, only 58 are on California’s list of banned assault weapons.”

Further, when the California Department of Justice conducted its own survey which proved that the banned firearms had a statistically insignificant 1.3% involvement in violent crime, the survey was suppressed.

This ban is not only dishonest in conception, it is destructive in effect. While it does nothing to fight crime, it makes criminals out of law-abiding citizens for possessing firearms that are functionally no different from ordinary hunting rifles in use for a century. Furthermore, since police and prosecutors have not been trained to identify the banned weapons, law-abiding citizens are at risk of false arrest, prosecution and even conviction for possessing firearms that are not on the banned list but look similar to those which are. MICHAEL J. McNULTY

Chairman, C.O.P.S.

Corona