W. Hollywood Gun Curb Idea Spreading

A proposal by tiny West Hollywood to cut gun violence is mushrooming into a regional assault on the cheap pistols known as Saturday night specials.

The Westside city’s prohibition on the gun sales, finalized Tuesday, has inspired several other Southern California cities, including Los Angeles, to study similar proposals. Compton this week gave initial approval to a Saturday night special sales ban. Huntington Park appears close to doing the same. And Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council’s four women members joined in proposing a ban on the sale of the cheap handguns.

“I think there is going to be an absolute flood of cities passing ordinances like ours,” said Paul Koretz, the West Hollywood councilman who first raised the issue. “It’s very exciting. It’s exactly what we hoped would happen. Perhaps by 1997 . . . we can build the momentum to pass this statewide.”

In 1989, it took the action of several cities to push a reluctant Legislature to ban assault rifles.

The final battle over whether the pistols can be banned, however, may be fought in the courts. The National Rifle Assn. and another major gun owners’ group said Wednesday that they soon will file suit against West Hollywood, accusing the city of illegally usurping the state’s power to regulate the sale of firearms. The gun groups plan to seek an injunction to prevent enforcement of the law.

The organizations also contend that by targeting Saturday night specials, the cities are discriminating against the poor.

“If a person can only afford to buy a $100 pistol, it’s unfair to say, ‘You don’t have enough money to protect yourself,’ ” said Bob Grego, field representative for the 65,000-member California Rifle and Pistol Assn. “It’s an elitist measure, more than anything else.”

But local officials who have despaired over a continuing onslaught of gun violence said they are grasping at the West Hollywood model, even if it means only incremental improvement.

“Considering our situation in Compton, we believe the sale of these kinds of weapons does impact violence,” said Mayor Omar Bradley, whose city will take a final vote on banning cheap handguns next month. “If it decreases our murder rate by one, that one person is going to be grateful for his or her life.”

Los Angeles Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who introduced the proposed Saturday night special ban in her city, said she wants to prevent accidental shootings and suicides as well as homicides.

“We are not so naive as to think this is going to take all these guns off the street,” Goldberg said. “But if we can reduce the flow and lower the number of people with access to cheap handguns, people who might use them in a moment of haste, then maybe we can prevent them from killing someone else or themselves.”

A recent Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms report on Southern California gun crime found that “many criminals have apparently given up Saturday night specials in favor of larger caliber handguns.”

But the Los Angeles Police Department found that during criminal investigations last year, it confiscated 1,437 Saturday night specials made by seven Southern California manufacturers alone.

The Saturday night specials confiscated were found at the scenes of 64 murders, 56 robberies, 109 assaults and a host of other crimes. Twenty were taken on school grounds. They accounted for about 13% of all firearms confiscated by Los Angeles police in 1995. The figures do not include cheap pistols made by manufacturers outside Southern California.

The West Hollywood ordinance and the others seek to ban the sale of those pistols and others made of cheap materials, and that are poorly manufactured or lack safety devices.

Ironically, the city’s largest gun dealer closed its doors last month because of poor sales. The Brass Rail was one of four shops in a Los Angeles-area chain that shut down because “volume wasn’t what it used to be,” according to an employee with the company that used to operate the stores.

While some West Hollywood pawnshops sell Saturday night specials, the only remaining gun dealer in the city said he has never dealt in the weapons. Ted Szajar, the owner of L.A. Guns in West Hollywood, called Saturday night specials “pieces of junk” that “don’t really work.”

Gun control supporters said the ordinance’s impact will be felt regionwide, regardless of the number of gun sales in West Hollywood. “They are taking the leadership role. What they are doing is critically important,” said Dede Whiteside of the Los Angeles-based King Institute for Non-Violence.

Before the West Hollywood law takes effect Feb. 16, city staff members will draw up a list of the guns that cannot be sold there.

In Compton, which had 82 murders last year, the law needs only one more council approval.

The action was spurred, in part, by one of the last murders of 1995, the shooting deaths of three friends who were in a driveway preparing for a regular roller-skating jaunt. After that incident, Bradley ordered the Police Department--which confiscated 732 handguns between July 1994 and July 1995--to cancel vacations and deploy more patrol officers through the end of the year.

In Huntington Park, officials said they are ready to follow West Hollywood’s lead and act on a ban. Councilman Ric Loya said a majority of his colleagues are prepared to support the law, and Mayor Tom Jackson said that, given that news, he is ready to bring the measure to a vote.

The ordinance would be largely symbolic in the southeast Los Angeles County community, where there are no licensed gun dealers. But, as Jackson said, “maybe this will prevent them from trying to come in.”

The Los Angeles law would face its first committee hearing in early February and apparently has broad support among council members. Goldberg said 11 of her 14 colleagues offered to second her motion to ban the weapons.

She said she eventually chose her three female colleagues--Laura Chick, Ruth Galanter and Rita Walters--to second the motion as a symbolic gesture, because women’s organizations have been leading the push for local gun ordinances.

Progress on the local front came on the same day that state lawmakers for the second straight year rejected a proposal by Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles) to enact a statewide Saturday night special ban.

The Assembly Public Safety Committee on Tuesday voted 5 to 3, with the Republican majority prevailing, to kill the proposal. Caldera also has attempted to clear the way for cities to pass their own gun control laws, but his local control proposals twice have been voted down and another is expected to lose next week.

Even without the state’s permission, West Hollywood’s city attorney and lawyers for several gun control organizations argue that cities have the right to ban sales of what they believe are inherently dangerous weapons.

They plan to argue in the upcoming court fight that state law governs only “licensing and registration” of guns and that the Legislature has not spoken on other gun issues.

But the National Rifle Assn. says the state’s preeminence on gun legislation is clear. “We don’t think there is any doubt that the state controls this area,” said Steve Helsley, the NRA’s state liaison.

Gun organizations want California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren to intervene in the case. “We are hoping the chief law enforcement officer of the state won’t just wait for us,” Helsley said.

The NRA official cited a recent opinion from the legislative counsel’s office, which concluded that local Saturday night special bans, such as West Hollywood’s, are invalid. The opinion says that state control of all gun issues is “implied” because of its broad powers to license and register guns.

The Saturday night special laws are just the latest in a series of actions by Southern California cities to control gun violence.

Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and other cities followed Pasadena’s lead in requiring ammunition buyers to fill out registration forms. Los Angeles and West Hollywood sought to tighten restrictions on the hundreds of dealers who sell guns from homes or car trunks under federal permits but in violation of local zoning and licensing laws.

Pro-gun control forces in Sacramento said they depend on the local initiatives to get the Legislature to act.

“I don’t think anything at all can happen here until there is sufficient grass-roots support to really make legislators realize there is support for this,” said Dan Reeves, senior consultant to Caldera. “Otherwise, they will continue to vote in lock-step with the gun lobby.”

Times correspondent Susan Steinberg contributed to this story.