Gun Lobby Wounded By Its Own Logic

We’ve all heard the bromide, “If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.” It’s a clever turn of words and makes some sense until you think about it. Then it makes a case for tighter gun control.

Bear with me.

In the first place, nobody’s talking about outlawing all guns, except the scaremongers who run the gun organizations and need to keep the dues flowing from anxious gun owners. Nobody advocates banning hunting rifles and shotguns or six-shooters. But ban semiautomatics with banana clips capable of mowing down everybody in a room within seconds--the so-called assault rifles? That makes good sense to most citizens, polls show. So does restricting handgun access.

So the issue isn’t outlawing guns, it’s controlling guns--how you use them, how you get them and what kind. Despite gun lobby rhetoric, this is all perfectly constitutional under the 2nd Amendment, which refers to the people’s right “to keep and bear arms.” No gun control law ever has been overturned by a federal court on 2nd Amendment grounds.

Indeed, retired Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger, not exactly a liberal, once said of the gun lobby and the 2nd Amendment: “This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud--I repeat the word ‘fraud’--on the American people by special interests that I have ever seen.”

When gunners mouth the mantra about guns and outlaws, it’s usually shorthand for the legitimate point that only law abiders will be troubled by legality. Criminals always can get a gun.

From where? you may ask. They’ll buy one from a thief or steal one themselves. Steal one from where? From people like you and me.

And what if we didn’t have so many guns for them to steal?

That’s a conversation closer. You’re just not interested in the facts, you’ll hear.

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Fact: There now are 288,656 firearms listed as stolen in California, according to the state Department of Justice.

Nobody knows how many stolen firearms really are out there because a lot of gun thefts go unreported. An estimated 100,000 are pilfered annually. Guns are the No. 1 target of home burglars.

But there seems to be an endless supply for everybody. Last year, 664,000 firearms were legally purchased in California, nearly two-thirds of them handguns, according to Justice Department estimates.

There are an estimated 216 million privately owned guns in America, the most armed citizenry in the world. That would place about 22 million in California, if you calculate by the usual 10 percent. In this state, according to a poll, about half of all households with a registered voter harbor at least one gun.

And, of course, there are these facts: During the decade ending in 1993, there were 18,320 people murdered with handguns in California. The handgun murder rate doubled in that period. Also, in 1992, there were 5,100 people who died of gunshots in the state, 23% more than died in auto accidents.

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These thoughts came to mind as I sat in a Capitol news conference Tuesday and watched two Republican legislators stand with two gun lobbyists and propose legislation allowing more people to carry handguns--out on the street, into their office and down to the local bar. They called it the “Citizens Self-Defense Act.”

And the lobbyists and the lawmakers--Assemblyman William J. (Pete) Knight of Palmdale and Sen. Dick Monteith of Modesto--had a new pitch: This really is a sort of affirmative action issue. That’s right, Knight said, women and minorities are not getting “their fair share” of permits to carry concealed weapons. Sheriffs and police chiefs issue permits primarily to white males. Their bill would “close the door to the good old boys club.”

It is true that many sheriffs, especially in the rural counties, traditionally have issued gun permits to cronies. The California Rifle and Pistol Assn. estimated, based on a small sample of the 33,000 existing permits, that 71% are held by white males. But it had no idea how many women and minorities actually had applied for permits and been turned down.

The legislation would require sheriffs and chiefs to issue a permit to any adult who passed a background check and firearms course. Now, an applicant must show “good cause,” and the decision is strictly up to local law officials, who adamantly oppose losing this discretion. But Knight dismissed their concern, comparing it to a fireman saying there shouldn’t be “matches in a house.”

Meanwhile, in a dueling news conference, Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) reintroduced a bill killed last year by the GOP and the gun lobby that would permit prosecutors to charge people who illegally pack handguns with a felony. Now it’s only a misdemeanor. It’s already a felony to carry a blackjack. But, of course, there is no blackjack lobby.