LAPD Chief, Sheriff Back State Ban on Small Pistols : Weapons: Block and Williams address a legislative hearing in Los Angeles. A study has found that the vast majority of the nation’s small-caliber handguns are made in Southern California.

Possibly drawing battle lines for a legislative campaign next year, two of Los Angeles County’s top law enforcement officials on Thursday endorsed banning the manufacture and sale of small-caliber handguns in California.

The cheap guns, which studies show are popular with gang members, have been banned in Maryland, South Carolina and parts of Illinois.

Speaking at a legislative hearing Thursday in Downtown Los Angeles, Police Chief Willie L. Williams said a nationwide ban on the popular so-called Saturday Night Specials would be more effective, “but if there’s a will within the state and city governments that this is an issue . . . perhaps we’ll be a leader as we were with the waiting period and assault weapons ban.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block said he would support a ban on the guns, most of which are made in the Southland, but was unsure whether it would have a major impact on crime prevention.

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Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the Assembly Select Committee on Gun Violence, said he may introduce legislation next year to ban small-caliber weapons.

The hearing was the first of four that Caldera’s committee will hold statewide before drafting legislation aimed at some type of gun regulation.

A California ban on small-caliber weapons would have national impact. A study by a UC Davis researcher released last month found that seven Southland gun companies made about 80% of all small-caliber handguns in the United States in 1992. Another study, conducted by the Los Angeles branch of Women Against Gun Violence and released at the hearing, showed that .25-caliber guns made by one Southland company, Phoenix Arms, were the weapons most frequently recovered at crime scenes by the LAPD from 1990 to 1991.

Phoenix Arms, based in Ontario, said no spokesman was available for comment.

Williams said that tackling small-caliber guns is “a very ticklish (position) to be in, politically pretty risky, but until we’re in the position where we’re not having 70 people a month killed (by guns in the city), we don’t have any other alternative.”

Not all law enforcement officials at the hearing backed the ban.

“I think it’s sort of a mistake,” said George Rodriguez, special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, to think “that restricting the sale or possession of a type of weapon is going to have an impact on the crime problem.”

Gun control advocates suggested other restrictions.

“We’re going to have to pick at this in small pieces,” said Ann Reiss Lane, coordinator of Women Against Gun Violence. Citing the fact that the small size of the gun makes it popular and easily concealable, Lane suggested a minimum size requirement for handguns.

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She also called for liability laws on gun makers.

“If you manufacture lawn darts,” she said, “you can be held liable if some kid throws it at some other kid. There seems to be an analogy.”

Speakers also expressed concern about the surging popularity of 9-millimeter handguns and the state’s lack of a computerized gun registration system. Caldera said the committee would weigh legislation to tighten registration laws.

Stephen Sposato, whose wife was killed by a mentally disturbed gunman in a San Francisco law office in 1993, said he had to get a permit to retrieve his wife’s ashes from a crematory but needed no such paperwork to get a handgun.

Block advocated a system in which gun owners would need a valid license to buy and keep firearms. Many law enforcement officials asked Caldera to resurrect a bill narrowly defeated in the Legislature this past year that would make carrying a concealed gun a felony. It is now a misdemeanor to carry a concealed gun, though it is a felony to carry a concealed knife or club.