Roberti Recall Is a Gun-Control Vendetta : Tab to Punish the Senator May Reach $1 Million

From the start, it has been painfully obvious that the goal of the effort to recall Sen. David A. Roberti from office was to punish him for his longstanding and sensible support of tighter gun control laws. The April 12 referendum on Roberti is a political vendetta that will cost cash-strapped Los Angeles County (and its taxpayers) between $800,000 and $1 million to conduct. It is all the more ridiculous because Roberti is set to leave office anyway, in December, because of term limits.

The battle plan for any bona fide recall election effort involves providing as many good reasons as possible for voting elected representatives out of office before their terms expire. The vengeful, wasteful, gun lobby-inspired effort to oust Roberti seems to have missed that point entirely. Purposefully or inadvertently, Roberti’s foes have provided some of the best arguments for defeating their recall attempt. They have also generated great fodder for the kind of gun control legislation Roberti has fought so hard for, and for the almost total ban on private gun ownership supported by The Times.

First, there was the $12,500 in guns stolen from the Van Nuys apartment of a recall backer last month. “It really makes me a little nervous,” said William A. Dominguez after the break-in, in which burglars escaped with seven rifles, including three semiautomatics, four pistols and four shotguns. “I’m not a paranoid type, but I actually have a feeling it (the burglary) was politically motivated.”

We’ve got some news. According to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, there are five main ways that armed career criminals obtain their weapons. The second most common way is through criminal acts, such as burglaries. Care to guess what the most common method is? It’s from off-the-street sales through the black market. Many of those sales involve stolen weapons that had first been legally acquired.

Many of the guns that fall into the hands of juveniles are found at home, tucked away in supposedly safe places by parents or siblings. One juvenile last year found a ready supply of handguns in the glove compartments of the cars he broke into. Those weapons had been purchased as collector’s items or for home- or self-defense. They wound up being used for something else entirely.

Next, the Roberti recall backers came up with an incredibly stupid idea from a public relations vantage point: raising money for the recall effort by--you guessed it--raffling off more guns. Among the top prizes was a copycat semiautomatic assault rifle, a virtual twin of one of 67 weapons singled out in the legislative ban on such military-style firearms that Roberti co-sponsored in 1989.

The raffle brought attention to the fact that gun manufacturers have skirted the ban by changing model numbers or slightly altering a design. One such copycat was used in July by Gian Luigi Ferri to kill eight people in a San Francisco office tower.

Even the effort to obtain state Republican Party support for the Roberti recall ought to raise some eyebrows. It brought attention to the fact that some of the state’s most prominent Republicans want nothing to do with the recall, or think of it as a potential waste of resources. Gov. Pete Wilson, for example, praised Roberti for his help in passing the state budget and steered a wide berth around the recall. “We have a shortage of funds,” said state Sen. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno), “and should be putting our money into races where we have a better chance of winning.” And this from Republican political consultant Paul Clarke: “Why should the party waste its time on a recall?”

Even recall leader Russ Howard admits that the raffle idea “came at a bad time.” We’ll go one further. The recall itself is a badly timed and very lousy idea, one that should be soundly defeated at the polls.