They Hope to Create a Bear Market for Gun Owners

Two recent murder cases that stunned this quiet community have prompted a UC Irvine student group and the Brea Police Department to offer teddy bears to gun owners who turn in a weapon today.

With this twist on the popular cash-for-guns exchange programs designed to get firearms off the streets, organizers of the program hope to give away 150 bears donated by a toy company. The guns collected will be destroyed.

Members of the group, Student Physicians for Social Responsibility, said the event was prompted by recent killings in Yorba Linda--one of a mother by her 14-year-old son, who used a .22-caliber handgun, and another by a man who shot himself with a revolver after suffocating his two children.

“We’re very concerned about the presence of guns in the home,” said Neal Handly, a third-year medical student and member of the UCI group. “We call them a specter of a health problem, especially for children.”

The recent shootings presented “an immediate situation” to mobilize the exchange, Handly said. “There were two events where guns were used to harm family members.”

The group had been attempting to organize the teddy bear exchange for about a year, he said. In early 1995, representatives of the UCI chapter went to a national meeting, where the students heard about successful guns-for-bears exchanges on the East Coast, sponsored by the Vermont Teddy Bear Co.

“In some cases, people become concerned about having the guns but don’t know what to do with them,” Handly said.

Group members contacted the teddy bear manufacturer, which donated 150 of the stuffed animals, valued at about $80 each. But the students had difficulty finding a police department to co-sponsor the event, Handly said.

“They were cooperative until it came time to committing the officers for a day,” he said. “Apparently, the overtime money wasn’t there.”

The involvement of the Brea Police Department, which provides service to neighboring Yorba Linda, represented “the first time we could get the cooperation of a police department,” Handly said.

The UCI group, with about 25 members, is an anti-violence organization that addresses various public health issues, including gun control. According to information from the group, $4 billion is spent nationally each year to care for victims of gunfire, which depletes resources from others who need medical attention.

Groups that support gun ownership disagree, however, and say the benefits of protecting one’s home with a weapon and maintaining the freedom to do so outweigh the drawbacks of misuse of firearms. Such gun exchanges, they maintain, are largely ineffective in decreasing the use of illegal weapons.

The UCI group expects to gather about 50 guns during the exchange, but can accommodate 150 if needed, Handly said.

The gun exchange will be at the Police Department substation, 19831 Yorba Linda Blvd., from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Information: (714) 777-8620.