Pasadena Shows Pitfalls of Anti-Gun Effort

The battle to legislate weapons off the street holds hidden pitfalls, and Los Angeles--which Wednesday decided to ban Saturday night specials--need only look to its neighboring city of Pasadena for an example.

Last year, the Pasadena City Council passed what was believed to be the first law of its kind in the nation, requiring registration of people who buy handgun ammunition. For a few months, the ordinance was the hottest crime-fighting tool in the county, with similar measures adopted from Azusa to Beverly Hills.

A year later, a Pasadena city analysis determined that the measure had “little or no effect” in stopping violence. After all, Pasadenans could just cross Colorado Boulevard to a Big 5 store in county territory, where the law does not apply.

Now that Los Angeles has jumped on the newest gun control bandwagon--banning Saturday night specials--it can look to Pasadena’s law and others to see how the complex issues of gun control and public safety play out beyond council chambers.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday unanimously outlawed the sale and manufacture of the weapons. Gun control advocates were celebrating, saying that as it becomes the 13th California city to adopt the ban, Los Angeles may set an example for other cities and even states to follow.

But there is an ongoing debate about whether municipal gun restrictions are anything other than symbolic, with even some proponents saying the laws are toothless.

“It has to be statewide,” said Compton Police Capt. Steve Roller, whose city banned Saturday night specials this summer. “Criminals are transient. If they ban it in L.A., if they ban it in Compton, there are a whole lot of cities between L.A. and Compton where it’s not banned.”

Gun control advocates say they hope that the Saturday night special ban can travel the same route as the assault weapons ban--which was passed by cities such as Los Angeles and West Hollywood before becoming state and federal laws. When the assault weapons ban went statewide, supporters say, its effects were felt. Statistics from 1994, the last year for which information is available, showed federal traces of criminally used assault weapons in California holding steady while they soared in the rest of the nation.

Backers of the ban on Saturday night specials--which would only cover a small number of cheaper firearms--admit that the law is no foolproof fix for the violence racking the nation. Nor, they say, was Pasadena’s bullet registration program, nor even the assault weapons ban.

“I think you’ve just got to keep trying, any way that you can, to get at the problem,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Rita Walters. “Hopefully, someday, we can end up with something more comprehensive.”

That sort of scattershot, pragmatic approach has taken hold nationwide, with Saturday night specials the target of choice. Most of these laws have only been enacted in the last few months and analysts says there is little or no evidence yet of their effectiveness.

Advocates say that most gun regulation occurs on the city and county level, with California as one of the busiest laboratories:

* Thirteen cities in the east San Francisco Bay are banding together to ban Saturday night specials. Oakland and San Francisco have outlawed the weapons, and Alameda and Contra Costa counties are considering similar ordinances.

* Other Northern California cities such as Richmond are considering “trigger locks” to childproof guns, as well as zoning ordinances to restrict where gun dealers can set up shop.

* Saturday night specials are banned in Maryland. Washington, D.C., and New York City have registration laws so restrictive that the weapons are essentially banned.

“This local action is absolutely the wave of the future,” said Steve Pertschuk, executive director of Californians for Responsible Gun Laws, which is coordinating the Northern California restrictions. “The state and Congress are paralyzed by the [National Rifle Assn.], and it’s not going to change any time soon.”

Analysts say most public safety laws are tested by local and state governments before reaching the federal level, and gun control is no exception. Such testing allows governments to weed the effective statutes from the ineffective, such as the ammunition registration laws.

After a spate of youth violence, which included a Halloween triple murder and the death of a 16-year-old girl at a Valentine’s Day dance, Pasadena voted last year to require all buyers of ammunition to present identification and register at gun shops, which would be required to make the data available to police.

Azusa, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Los Angeles followed in Pasadena’s footsteps. But seven months later, Azusa repealed its law, saying it was ineffective and burdened local businesses.

In Pasadena, ammunition sales dropped 50% after the law’s passage, partly because of the closure of two gun shops. But police said the registration information was useless in helping them solve crimes, and most bullets in shootings were bought illegally anyway. The city audit determined that the law had mostly symbolic value.

So today the ammunition registration material sits in a file in Pasadena police headquarters, administered by a volunteer. When that volunteer isn’t in the office, as was the case Thursday, police officials say they can’t find the files.

Now, few cities are bothering to pass ammunition registration laws. The focus is on Saturday night specials, especially those made in Southern California by a group of arms manufacturers sometimes known as the “Ring of Fire.”

Federal firearms officials say the cheap, easy-to-conceal guns represent a disproportionate number of handguns traced in violent crimes in the United States. One out of every five times authorities traced a handgun used in a murder, robbery, assault or drug crime between January 1991 and May 1994, it led to one of the six companies.

That makes Wednesday’s vote by the Los Angeles City Council even more important, said M. Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center, a Washington lobbying and research group. “If some place in Minnesota bans Saturday night specials, it barely gets noticed. Los Angeles bans them, everybody in the country takes notice.”

Critics say that the bans on Saturday night specials--inspired by a West Hollywood law adopted last year--are vague, only cover a tiny fraction of the available cheap guns and fly in the face of state laws forbidding gun bans. The NRA has sued West Hollywood over its ban.

Analysts say that the effectiveness of gun bans is difficult to evaluate, especially when laws vary so widely from state to state.

But regulation still makes a difference--albeit sometimes a small one--on the local level, advocates say. In Los Angeles, there are 30% fewer gun shops now than there were in 1994, thanks, probably, to a slew of local regulations and restrictions--including the ammunition registration law--which have chased some of the businesses from the city, said LAPD Capt. Marlin Warkentin.

“You’ve got to try,” said LAPD Det. Steve Mulldorfer, who inspects the city’s 91 gun shops. “They could always go outside of the city and obtain this ammunition [or guns], but you’ve got to start at the ground and work up.”