No Laughing Matter : San Marcos Entrepreneur Responds to Firearm Violence With Innovative Comic Books for Guns Trade-In Program

Toys. Cash. Pizzas. Entertainment tickets. Psychological therapy. Impulse-control counseling. Dry-cleaning. Ski-lift passes.

And now . . . comic books!

The attempt to slow the arming of America by offering inducements for firearms owners to turn in their guns continues.

This time, the focus is San Marcos, a pleasant suburb north of San Diego. It is a Little League, youth soccer and community theater kind of city, the last place you might figure to panic over gunplay in the streets.

But a deadly gang shooting at a bus stop across the street from the high school jolted the owner of a comic book store out of his it-can’t-happen-here complacency.

Mike Harris was driving by while the victim was still bleeding and paramedics were desperately trying to save his life. That night, a second teen-ager was fatally gunned down at home, in what authorities believe was retaliation by rival gang members.

“Stuff like that told me, hey, I’ve got to get involved,” said Harris, whose Sky High Comics store is in one of the city’s numerous strip malls.

Harris joined a group of comic book artists from La Jolla to devise an offer meant to entice comic aficionados and collectible investors: Turn in a gun to the Sheriff’s Department, no questions asked, and you can get a signed copy of a limited-edition, gold-covered comic of the action heroes called WILDC.A.T.S.

Sheriff’s Deputy Tom Janenko admits being skeptical about how many guns would be turned in. “I figured if we got one gun, we’d be successful,” Janenko said.

Instead, the offer that began Tuesday brought 14 guns and rifles in the first two days, including a couple of sawed-off shotguns, several Saturday night specials favored by street gangsters, and a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol of the kind that is the weapon-of-choice of drug soldiers.

The haul may not be much by urban standards, but in a small, mostly violence-free community such as San Marcos, it’s a big deal and further affirmation that moving to the suburbs is no sure-fire way to escape guns and violence.

“There are too many kids out there killing each other with guns,” said a woman whose son was killed by a gun in San Marcos several years ago.

She and a friend turned in a weapon at the San Marcos sheriff’s station and got a voucher for the WILDC.A.T.S comic. “It’s a start,” she said. “This is one gun that will never hurt anybody.”

Split by California 78 in inland northern San Diego County, San Marcos is a growing community (population: 45,991) with middle-income subdivisions, handsome tile-roof shopping centers and a new state university on what was once one of California’s largest chicken ranches.

From the standpoint of crime and safety, San Marcos is decidedly middle of the pack. There are small-bore problems with gangs and drugs, but the city had only two homicides last year and a handful of shootings.

Statistics gathered by the San Diego Assn. of Governments show that San Marcos residents are safer from crime than their neighbors in Escondido, Vista and Oceanside, but more at risk than residents of more upscale places such as Solana Beach, Encinitas and Carlsbad.

Compared to San Diego, 30 miles away, living in San Marcos is far from hazardous. A resident of San Diego is twice as likely to be murdered, assaulted or have his or her car stolen than is a resident of San Marcos.

“The people of San Marcos are trying to maintain what they have,” Janenko said. “They want to make sure it doesn’t become a gang-infested, crime-infested place.”

Gun exchange programs--and gun buyback programs--have proliferated in the 1990s. Handgun Control, a national group, reports 70-plus such efforts nationwide, including offerings by big cities (such as Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle) and smaller ones (Syracuse, N.Y., Omaha, Neb., Charlestown, W.V., Beloit, Kan.).

In San Diego a buyback program netted 859 firearms. A four-month exchange program run by Ticketmaster brought 412 in Los Angeles. A one-day exchange for Mighty Ducks hockey tickets brought 104 firearms to the Anaheim police.

But in a country with 200 million guns and rifles in private hands, and 1.5 million being manufactured annually, criminologists have doubted the impact of gun exchange and buyback programs in curbing crime or controlling the number of weapons.

In San Marcos, the guns-for-comics program has encountered no opposition. By Saturday, 28 guns had been turned in, some by teen-agers, others by parents worried about the deadly potential in their midst. All the guns will be destroyed.

The special edition of WILDC.A.T.S will be available in late June for those holding vouchers. They will be signed by Jim Lee, president and chief layout artist at La Jolla’s WildStorm Productions, publishers of the comic line.

For those not conversant with the world of comic super-heroes, the WILDC.A.T.S are crime-fighting members of Covert Action Teams who do battle with the evil Daemonites, who are forever plotting to rule the earth.

Chuck Swift, 53, who makes his living in real estate, figured that a WILDC.A.T.S comic might be a good investment. He brought in a rifle that has been around his house and for which he has no use.

“It’s a good thing you’re doing,” Swift told Harris after dropping the rifle at the sheriff’s station and coming over to take a look at WILDC.A.T.S.

“Thanks man,” Harris said. “I’m just trying to make a difference.”