Roberti Proposes a 5% Excise Tax on Firearms : Legislation: Another measure introduced by the Senate leader would prohibit most guns that can hold more than 10 rounds.

Senate Leader David A. Roberti, the Legislature’s No. 1 advocate of tougher gun controls, on Friday proposed levying an additional 5% sales tax on the purchase of firearms and ammunition and restricting gun magazines to a maximum 10 rounds.

The introduction of the two bills by the Van Nuys Democrat, who successfully led the Senate campaign in 1989 against semiautomatic assault weapons, seemed certain to touch off a renewed fight over gun restrictions in a political climate considered to be hostile to new taxes.

The gun tax measure would establish a 5% excise tax on firearms and ammunition in addition to the current statewide sales tax. It would raise about $7 million that would be channeled to cities and counties for law enforcement. To become law, it would require a two-thirds vote of each house and Gov. Pete Wilson’s signature.

Virtually every major political leader in California, including Republican Gov. Wilson and even Roberti, ruled out new consumer taxes to overcome an estimated $8-billion revenue shortfall and balance the state budget.

In an interview, Roberti said Friday that he did not consider an excise tax on guns and bullets to be a consumer tax. He said earmarking the extra revenue from gun and ammunition purchases for public safety is similar to dedicating alcohol and tobacco excise taxes to fight public health problems.

Roberti said that in comparison to taxes paid by drinkers and the alcohol industry, producers of arms and bullets have been coddled. He asserted that problems associated with firearms “have been escalating at a far faster rate” than those caused by alcohol.

With certain exceptions, the gun magazine bill would make it illegal starting Jan. 1 for an individual or business to possess or own an ammunition magazine that could hold more than 10 rounds. Violators would be subject to a maximum prison term of one year or a $5,000 fine or both.

It would allow current gun owners, manufacturers and retailers to keep their high-capacity magazines if they obtained a special permit from local sheriff’s or police departments; registered with the state Department of Justice; stored the magazine at a gun range or altered it permanently to contain no more than 10 rounds.

Proponents of stricter controls on rifles, shotguns and handguns have long campaigned for restricting a weapon’s ammunition capacity as a way to reduce crime and violence. Some pistols can hold 17 or more rounds while certain rifle magazines can hold more than 30 cartridges.

Gun owner organizations, including the National Rifle Assn., have countered that the capacity of a magazine is irrelevant. They maintain that such restrictions will be ignored by criminals but will fall on law-abiding Californians who use high-capacity weapons for self-protection.

Roberti said he would limit magazines to 10 rounds because “anything above that goes beyond legitimate concepts of self-defense in just about all cases. It exposes the public to unwarranted danger of excessive bullets.”

After five Stockton schoolchildren were killed in 1989 by a gunman armed with a high-capacity semiautomatic rifle, Roberti helped write a landmark law that banned nearly 60 types of semiautomatic firearms in California.

In 1990, he pushed a bill through the upper chamber requiring all gun buyers to wait 15 days before taking possession of a firearm.

The veteran Senate officer last year narrowly won a special election in the San Fernando Valley over the intense opposition of some gun owner organizations.