Bill Would Allow More People to Carry Guns : Legislature: Measure by two GOP lawmakers is in contrast to package offered by Democrats to tighten firearms laws.

Taking aim at the practice of granting concealed weapons permits to a privileged few, two conservative Republican lawmakers proposed a new law Tuesday to allow more Californians to carry guns.

The announcement by Assemblyman William J. (Pete) Knight (R-Palmdale) and state Sen. Dick Monteith (R-Modesto) signaled the beginning of a showdown with Democratic legislators who advocate stricter gun control and who, earlier Tuesday, unveiled an ambitious six-bill package to restrict firearms access.

Amid predictions that the bills would cancel each other out--leaving gun law essentially unchanged at the end of the legislative session--both the Republicans and the Democrats tried to put a human face on their dueling goals.

For the Republicans, that meant a chance to cloak their bill in terms typically dear to Democrats by claiming that it will correct a pattern of racial and sexual discrimination.

Jeanne Richardson, a young mother from Stockton who was kidnaped and assaulted last fall, told reporters at a news conference that she tried to get a permit to carry a gun for protection but was denied even an application. Now she lives in fear, she said.

“We live in the days of Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and Nicole Brown Simpson,” Richardson said. “Law enforcement protection is not an option you can count on.”

Ed Porter of Sacramento said he twice was denied a permit to carry a concealed weapon even though he resides in a dangerous neighborhood and has been shot at. Porter, an African American, offered statistics indicating that 96% of Sacramento County’s permits go to white males--presumably as a result of the “good old boy cronyism” cited by the Republican lawmakers.

Knight and Monteith cited results of a National Rifle Assn. survey that showed the majority of gun permits went to white males who are friends of the local sheriff or police chief.

Modeled after Florida’s gun laws, which now allow 260,000 people to carry weapons for self-protection, the proposed “Citizen Self-Defense Act” would force county sheriffs and police chiefs to loosen up access to gun permits. Gun-carrying rights would be granted to applicants who show they have a good reason, pass background checks eliminating criminals and the mentally incompetent, and complete a firearms training course.

Meanwhile, several Democrats, using newly compiled data about the high economic costs of gun violence, are pushing an ambitious package of bills to limit guns.

Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles) is behind the broadest measure--one to ban Saturday night specials, the cheap and easily concealable handguns most often associated with street crime and robberies.

Caldera also is carrying a bill allowing cities and counties to enact tougher gun control laws. Currently, state law preempts local government.

Caldera, who held hearings last year into the cost of gun violence, said the public is “sick and tired of the status quo” and wants to limit guns on the streets.

Citing a study by the California State Library, Caldera says medical care for gunshot victims cost $703 million in 1993.

“We’re in a state of emergency,” said Assemblywoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), who is carrying a measure prohibiting cities and counties from reselling confiscated guns.

Among the other bills are those making it a felony to carry a concealed gun without a permit; requiring gun owners to lock up their weapons and making it a misdemeanor for parents failing to limit children’s access to guns.

Democrats also presented the experiences of people affected by violence to back their bills. One was Griffin Dix, the father of a 15-year-old boy, Kenzo, who was shot and killed in May by one of his best friends when the friend found his family’s gun.

“He was just a kid and he made a child’s mistake,” Dix said of the boy who accidentally shot Kenzo, “and it turned into a fatality.”