Yes, Sometimes Guns Do Kill People : Permissive laws add to the sense of the region as one huge killing field

Four years have passed since a disturbed loner named Patrick Purdy transformed a Stockton schoolyard into a killing field with an AK-47 assault rifle. That horrific incident, which killed five children and wounded 30 others, finally gave California lawmakers the courage to pass two landmark gun regulations--a 15-day waiting period for buying firearms and a ban on military-style assault weapons. But every new brazen act of gun violence shows that California can and must go further to enact tighter gun laws to better ensure public safety.

The waiting period, which requires background checks by law enforcement officials, has stopped more than 13,000 firearm transactions since 1990 and prevented murderers, kidnapers and sex offenders from obtaining weapons. But the Assault Weapons Control Act has not fared as well--partly because of the way the law was drafted and partly because of the manner in which it is being enforced.

The law as passed in 1989 and implemented in 1991 avoided a generic ban in favor of a prohibition of specific models. That loophole, the result of legislative compromise, has enabled manufacturers to circumvent the law by modifying their weapons or introducing new models that fall outside the ban.

The state attorney general, who has authority to ban additional weapons, has added no weapons to the list since last year. As a result, firearms with the potential to end human life on a massive scale are still out there for the next lunatic to purchase legally. With easy access to weapons of all kinds, from complex automatic weapons to simple single-shot rifles, more mass killings are just a matter of time. Consider some incidents during the last two weeks.

Item: In Long Beach a gunman described as deranged goes on a shooting rampage and, police say, kills three people, including his mother.

Item: A man uses a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun to fatally shoot his girlfriend and their two children in Valinda.

Item: A disgruntled former employee of MCA allegedly brings a hunting rifle to a park across the street from the company’s 14-story headquarters in Universal City and opens fire, injuring seven people.

Such incidents are a reminder that more can be done by way of prevention. State Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), for example, has introduced a bill that would buttress the assault-gun ban by making it illegal to possess an ammunition magazine with a capacity of more than 10 bullets without a special permit. The Legislature need not wait for a repeat of tragedy. There has been more than enough gun-related crime to warrant passage of that bill without delay.