Fear of Riots Fuels Gun Sales : Weapons: One dealer says handgun, shotgun and ammunition sales have been five times higher than normal.

For two years Morrison Jackson’s husband had tried to persuade her that the couple should buy a gun to protect themselves and their South Pasadena home. “No way,” she would tell him. “Handguns are killing people and we don’t need more of that.”

But last week Jackson was standing inside a Monrovia firing range, pulling the trigger on a 9-millimeter pistol for the first time in her life as she took aim at a paper torso.

To hear San Gabriel Valley gun dealers tell it, Jackson is one of a growing number of people who have broken their vow to never buy a gun. Most say the primary reason is fear of widespread violence following a verdict in the federal trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of violating the civil rights of Rodney G. King.

Even in the suburbs, which went relatively unscathed after last year’s riots, gun dealers say that handgun, shotgun and ammunition sales, as well as lessons to use them, have risen sharply in past weeks.

“I think most of these people have been thinking about buying a gun for a long time, and this fear (of civil disorder) is pushing them over the line,” said Bryan Harris, vice president of purchasing at Turner’s Outdoorsman, which has stores in West Covina and Pasadena, as well as in other cities throughout Southern California. “Normally, maybe 10% to 20% of our customers are new gun owners. Now we’re running 50% to 60%. These are largely older people and women who are buying guns for self-protection.”

Harris estimates that, over the past few weeks, his stores have sold an average of five times the amount of handguns, shotguns and ammunition that he would expect to sell in an average month.

Despite law enforcement promises of better police preparation, “middle-class citizens are scared to death because they learned from the last riots that picking up the phone and dialing 911 will not protect them,” said Adel Simmons, who manages the Santa Anita Firing Range in Monrovia.

In the past month, she said, her basic gun safety and shooting technique classes have sometimes exceeded capacity. Many new gun owners, she said, are husbands and wives and business owners who say they were driven to arm themselves by repeated accounts in the news media of Southland violence and speculation about another civil uprising.

Lately, Simmons said, she has been training many senior citizens to use handguns. Roughly 40% of her students are women.

“At first the wives are (extremely) scared, but then they realize the gun is just another vacuum cleaner or other piece of equipment.”

Morrison Jackson works in theatrics at USC. Her husband, Ed Perez, works for a property management company. They have a 10-month-old daughter. Hours after they rented a pistol and test-fired it at the range in Monrovia last week, they plopped down a deposit at Turner’s Outdoorsman in Pasadena for a Luger 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol.

Like everyone who buys a firearm in California, Jackson and Perez will have to wait 15 days to pick up their gun while their backgrounds are checked--a requirement that gun shop owners say is spurring sales.

Once in hand, could Jackson, 32, pull the trigger on someone?

“If anybody tried to hurt my baby, you bet,” she said shortly after firing the rental pistol at the range.

“I would feel remorseful, but it’s the kind of remorse I could live with. Your whole perspective changes when you have a baby.”

Jackson said she reversed her “no guns in my house” stance suddenly last week after she overheard a South Pasadena police officer give her husband a piece of advice: “If I were you, I would buy a gun.”

The officer, she said, was standing on the couple’s driveway after taking a stolen vehicle report. She said he made the statement while chatting with Perez about the likelihood of civil disorder following a verdict in the King case.

“He (the officer) sees the bad elements out there. I look at the world through rose-colored glasses,” Jackson said. “I started thinking about what might happen after the verdict. . . . If I got hurt, I couldn’t protect my baby.”

South Pasadena Police Chief Thomas Mahoney said his department does not have a policy of recommending steps that citizens should take to defend themselves.

“I think that, if one of our officers actually recommended these people buy a gun, then this officer may have gotten involved in a conversation where he expressed his personal opinion,” Mahoney said.

“If I were asked for advice, my first response would be, ‘Why on earth do you want a firearm?’ ” Mahoney said. “If you feel you absolutely must have one, go to a range and fire a weapon and see if you can deal with that. If so, learn how to use it responsibly . . . and understand that if you want it as some talisman that you can hold in your hand and keep the bad people away, it doesn’t work like that.”

Jackson said she simply feels she must do something to ready herself for what seems to her to be inevitable violence--a notion reinforced by a constant barrage of news media accounts of slain police officers, carjackings and the videotaped beating of King.

She says she has trouble forgetting the second day of last year’s riots when, eight months pregnant, she spent three horrific hours fighting her way through traffic between her job at USC and home in South Pasadena: “The sky was black, people were cutting me off everywhere--it was the most horrible thing I could ever imagine.”

The same concern was expressed last week by a 47-year-old Arcadia man who was visiting a local shooting range to inquire about a basic handgun class. Fear of another civil uprising had driven him to the once unthinkable: buying a handgun for the home.

“Before, I thought, ‘Why would I need it? What would I do with it?’ ” he said, speaking on condition that his name not be published. “As for everybody, it’s the riots that led me to this decision (to buy a handgun). And it wasn’t just the riots--it was the lack of police response to it last year. Citizens like me were left to fend for themselves. If it’s more widespread next time, like people are saying, I want to make sure my house is protected. I don’t want to be another Reginald Denny,” referring to the truck driver whose beating during last year’s riots was broadcast on television.

Thousands of others share his fear.

Statewide, gun sales are up sharply since last year’s civil disorder in Los Angeles County, according to gun sales statistics from the state attorney general’s office.

The most recent statistics, which do not yet include numbers for Los Angeles County, show that 92,807 dealer record of sale documents--the paperwork that must be filled out for the background check--were recorded in the first two months of this year, compared with 76,669 in the same period last year.

Last year the attorney general’s statistics show a marked spike in gun sales statewide immediately after the April riots, particularly in Los Angeles County, where handgun sales last May were up about 64% over May, 1991. The county’s gun dealers filed purchase documents for 14,000 handguns last May. Gun sales statewide declined gradually after May, but in December they began to pick up again and have been brisk ever since.

Several San Gabriel Valley police chiefs say such numbers rattle the nerves of their officers, many of whom are already on edge in the wake of a rash of Southland police shootings this year. Police officials and gun dealers say that, despite the law and their best advice, many gun owners are carrying loaded weapons in their cars or on themselves.

California law says handguns can only be transported unloaded in locked containers that separate the gun from the ammunition. Guns may not be stored in car glove compartments. Rifles and shotguns can be carried in cases--separate from the ammunition--but must be unloaded.

Loaded handguns, shotguns and rifles can be kept in homes, though citizens can be prosecuted for leaving loaded weapons within reach of small children.

The law also says a concealed handgun can only be carried in public by people who have been issued a permit by the head of a city law enforcement agency, which allows the gun to be carried within city limits, or by the Sheriff’s Department, allowing the gun to be carried countywide.

The thought of average citizens driving or walking around with guns “leaves officers with the feeling that both the good guys and the bad guys are armed,” said Baldwin Park Police Chief Carmine Lanza.

“This is not the time for society to be arming itself,” he said. “If there is civil unrest this time around, I think things will be different. Law enforcement agencies have planned for it, and are better coordinated and equipped.”

Many police officials say that, since gun sales are sharply on the rise, they are faced with the worst-case scenario: Citizens are rushing out to buy guns based on emotionally charged decisions rather than those based on logic.

“I don’t have a problem with people who buy guns and then learn how to use them properly--when the gun is not bought in a hurry,” Pomona Police Chief Lloyd Wood said.

“But in this case I would not advise people to buy one because they would be reacting to a perceived threat, which means they are reacting emotionally. They’re more likely to hurt themselves because they haven’t had time for proper training. If they’re not cool about it, they can panic and end up killing innocent people.”

Jackson and her husband said they are aware of the safety issues surrounding gun ownership. They have vowed to buy a child-proof container for storing the weapon and say they will practice firing their new handgun at a shooting range.