Shooting Loopholes in ‘Tough’ Gun Laws : * Violent Week Shows Need for More Restrictions

In the words of the Santa Ana police lieutenant, it was a “very unusually active weekend.” In only 14 hours last week, four people were killed in four separate incidents in the county’s biggest city.

One shooting erupted in broad daylight, just before noon. The victims were young, as is often the case, ranging from 19 to 24. Unusual, perhaps, but unfortunately not out of place at the end of a week in Orange County with so many shootings in such out-of-the-ordinary circumstances that even those most numbed by continuing violence should have been awakened. Shootings cannot become so commonplace that they are shrugged off by those ever more inured to ever increasing rounds of gunfire and death.

One reason for the violence, of course, is the proliferation of guns. In the state’s tally of Orange County homicides last year, 114 of 173 were due to handguns, seven to rifles and three to shotguns. In 1985, the total homicides were 115, with 53 due to handguns. That means that in seven years, handgun homicides in the county more than doubled. Gun violence is a problem of the suburbs, as well as the inner city.

It was a handgun that was used in the shooting at the Westminster Mall. An 18-year-old youth allegedly fired at a group of girls and hit one he knew. She is 13 years old. The victim escaped death, the young suspect was captured, and will face charges. Many people’s reaction ran along the lines of, “Oh no, not in the mall.” A few years ago, the reaction was, “Oh no, not on the freeways.” But there have been other mall shootings, in Orange and Torrance and West Covina. For years both malls and Orange County were images of quintessential suburbia. No longer. Shootings now come to the malls, to Orange County.

Innocent victims abound. In Anaheim, in the shadow of Disneyland, two brothers were caught in a cross-fire between rival gangs the evening before the mall shooting. One brother is 7 years old. The other is 4. Thankfully, the county is not yet at the point where shootings of boys and girls so young are common. Yet pollster Louis Harris reported recently that across the country guns are now perceived as “a major health problem for children.”

The day after the mall shooting came the shooting deaths of an owner and an employee of a small Fountain Valley embroidery shop. The alleged shooter was the brother-in-law of one of the women. He was said to be “obsessed” with guns, opinionated, often threatening, a man who broke up a relationship of his daughter’s by threatening to kill her boyfriend.

The next night the guns came to a recreation center in Fountain Valley. One witness thought these shootings were gang-related. The three boys who were injured are 13, 15 and 17. They were in a place set aside for pleasure, featuring video machines and baseball batting cages, miniature golf and boat rides.

Last month a Santa Ana policeman said there were more shootings because more guns are available. A policeman in Orange said that when people disagree nowadays, they shoot each other.

A Harris poll two months ago found that 52% of Americans favor a federal law banning the ownership of all handguns. California has taken some steps in the right direction in making guns harder to obtain: a ban on assault weapons, a 15-day waiting period for gun buyers. But there are loopholes in the gun laws, and even the toughest laws will not stop homicides. It is clear that more must be done to stop the proliferation of these weapons of death. The events of one week in the life--and deaths--of Orange County make that obvious.