Key Assembly Panel Defeats Handgun Bill : Firearms: Measure would have outlawed easily concealed guns such as ‘Saturday night specials.’ Action apparently ends efforts to restrict weapons this year.

Republicans on a key Assembly committee Tuesday defeated a gun control bill that would have outlawed easily concealed handguns known as “Saturday night specials.”

The action by the Public Safety Committee appears to end for now the uphill efforts of gun control activists and local police chiefs to enact substantial new restrictions on firearms this year.

The outcome also reflected the continuing partisan paralysis that has seized the sharply divided Assembly since the 1994 elections: The committee of four Republicans and four Democrats split along party lines, leaving the vote one shy of the five needed for approval.

State Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), the author of SB 933, said the action dealt him a “temporary setback,” but added that he believes the measure can be rewritten to win the support of the committee’s swing vote, GOP Assemblyman Richard K. Rainey, a former Contra Costa County sheriff.

Rainey said he wants to ban cheap and unreliable “Saturday night specials” but complained that Polanco’s bill was so broadly written that it would outlaw high-quality “backup” handguns produced by major manufacturers and routinely used by police officers.

The name-brand concealed gun he carried as a sheriff, Rainey said, would be outlawed by the Polanco bill.

The bill, which was approved by the state Senate, would ban the manufacture and sale in California of pistols and revolvers prohibited by federal importation law since 1968 because they are “unsuitable” for sporting purposes. Importation standards imposed by the federal government include caliber and safety features of the handgun, as well as its weight, construction materials and barrel length.

Polanco told the committee it made no sense to ban foreign guns as unfit for Americans while allowing domestic manufacturers to produce the same types of firearms. He charged that the cheap handguns are dangerous, unreliable and designed only for killing people.

He testified that such guns, most of them produced by six so-called “Ring of Fire” factories in Southern California, are used disproportionately in street crimes by gang members and others because they are easily hidden and cheap.

Committee Chairwoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills), however, lashed out at Polanco, saying his bill contained no definition of a “Saturday night special.”

“If the intent is to ban all guns, that’s what this bill does,” Boland said.

But Los Gatos Police Chief Larry Todd, representing the California Police Chiefs Assn., called her conclusion “grossly inaccurate.” He said the handguns are “not designed to shoot a deer, kill a duck or put food on the table,” but rather to kill humans.

Todd likened the Polanco bill to “product safety standards” that long have applied to automobiles and other consumer products.

Although spokesmen for the National Rifle Assn. and other gun owner groups did not testify Tuesday, representatives of firearms manufacturers told the committee the bill would outlaw guns carried by police officers as backup protection.

Sam Parades, representing the Arcadia Machine and Tool Co. of Irwindale, which makes the handguns the Polanco bill would outlaw, said many police agencies have approved the use of his company’s guns as backups.

Meanwhile, in the state Senate on Tuesday, the Criminal Procedure Committee voted unanimous approval of a bill (AB 632) by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) that would increase to a felony the penalty for carrying a concealed stolen gun.