ELECTIONS : Handgun Ownership Goes on Trial in Milwaukee as Voters Weigh Ban : Ballot measure goes beyond other cities’ prohibitions. Referendum seeks to outlaw possession, not just sales.

From the immaculate display cases lined with pistols to the neat stacks of National Rifle Assn. pamphlets piled near the front entrance of the Badger Guns & Ammo store, there is no doubt where owner Mickey Beatovic stands.

There is no doubt, either, where the store itself stands, and that is what riles Beatovic as Milwaukee girds for a showdown over a referendum to ban possession of handguns within the city limits.

Batovic’s gun store lies in suburban West Milwaukee. But the end of Badger’s long driveway crosses the city line into Milwaukee.

“I’ll tell you my nightmare,” said Beatovic, one of the store’s three co-owners. “They pass this thing and you know there’s gonna be Milwaukee cops sitting out there, waiting for every car with Milwaukee licenses. Don’t think it won’t happen, my friend.”

There is no certainty about the future here because no U.S. city has ever adopted such a strict gun-control measure. Chicago and Washington outlaw the sale of handguns, but neither has tried to eliminate the hundreds of thousands of pistols residents already own.

Under the handgun ban proposal, nearly 300 federally licensed gun dealers (there are no gun shops in Milwaukee--most dealers sell out of their homes) would be restricted to selling only shotguns, rifles and the few pistols that have barrels longer than 10 inches.

Residents who own handguns would be urged to turn them over to city police, who would catalogue and then destroy the weapons. When handguns turn up during arrests, traffic stops and other police contacts, residents could face misdemeanor convictions punishable by $100 fines and $200 for repeat convictions. All firearms would be confiscated.

The potential sweep of Milwaukee’s proposed handgun ban has made it the central issue of the city’s fall election, pitting a coalition of crime-weary neighborhood groups and social activists against the state’s well-moneyed gun rights movement. Both sides agree only that the vote’s outcome may tell whether such radical gun control remedies can thrive elsewhere.

“This is going to start popping like popcorn throughout Wisconsin and, hopefully, throughout the rest of the U.S.,” said Peter Guyon Earle, a Milwaukee lawyer who drafted the ban.

“Our opponents say Milwaukee is a ‘bellwether city,’ and they’re right,” said James Fendry, a former city policeman who heads the Wisconsin Pro-Gun Movement, a gun rights advocacy group affiliated with the NRA. “We want to stop this here before it spreads.”

To do that, gun lobbyists have armed a political action group with a campaign reserve of more than $500,000 to defeat the ban.

Fendry said that over the final week of the campaign, the Wisconsin Citizens Against Crime expects to spend at least $350,000 in a television advertising blitz stressing the rights of gun ownership and warning that police may conduct house searches and monitor traffic at gun shops to seize handguns.

Fendry points to Chicago and Washington as examples of cities that have handgun sales freezes and remain “murder capitals.”

Gun rights activists warn of a court backlog of gun ban cases and soaring costs for the destruction of seized guns. And a handgun ban “could require police to perform search and seizures without a warrant, roadblocks and spot checks of vehicles,” wrote Harold A. Breier, a retired chief of Milwaukee’s police force.

The gun ban’s organizers say there will be no administrative costs and only a minor increase in court cases. And, they insist, police will not be obligated to search.

Instead, organizer Michael Trokan said, some city residents, perhaps as many as 30%, according to surveys, indicate a willingness to turn in their guns, which would “certainly have a beneficial effect on the rate of violence and on the numbers of suicide and accidental deaths caused by handgun use.”

Gun ban supporters have amassed only enough funds to launch limited radio spots. Relying on 3-month-old newspaper polls showing that 65% of Milwaukeeans back a handgun ban, they were happy to get even $2,500 from the National Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

“It’s not much but we don’t think Milwaukee residents will be swayed by scare tactics,” said Jeffrey Muchnick, vice president of the national group.

The handgun ban started out in June, 1993, as a minor petition drive, one of hundreds attempted every year by civic gadflies. The originator was Verdell DeYarman, 75, a neighborhood activist who gathered 3,500 signatures for a vaguely worded gun ban after a relative was gunned down by a tavern patron.

“I just thought it was high time to do something about all these guns,” she said.

DeYarman found allies among a group of former anti-war activists at the Peace Action Center, where she worked as a volunteer. Earle broadened the concept into a legal document and organizers gathered 23,000 valid signatures on their petitions--allowing the measure on the November ballot.

As Election Day approaches, business has boomed for gun dealers like Beatovic. Striding through a shop filled with gun browsers, he says: “We’ve been seeing a lot more handgun buyers. Some of it has to be from people who want to get their guns before the election.”

He is doing well now, but Beatovic worries about what a handgun ban would do to his income. At least half his customers, Beatovic estimated, live in Milwaukee. And at least 75% of his business comes from handgun sales, he said.

“We all could live without it, my friend,” he said. “The people behind this law have good intentions. I understand their frustrations about violence. But this law doesn’t help. People need to protect themselves--and I sell what they need. If they didn’t want guns, I’d already be out of business.”