Shooting-Range Suicides Trigger Questions on Gun-Rental Restrictions

Arthur Kampf gave no sign he was about to kill himself.

He calmly signed the appropriate forms, listened to safety instructions and paid $18 to rent a .38-caliber revolver at the Bullseye gun range. Kampf even joked and laughed with Mark Baradat, owner of the range, as they discussed the basics of target shooting.

“I studied the guy. I mean, I looked him up and down because I was nervous,” said Baradat, who moments before had been talking about a suicide at another Bay Area shooting range three days earlier.

“I was looking for any reason not to rent to him, but there was nothing--zero,” Baradat said Sept. 20, three days after the 62-year-old Kampf put the gun to his head, fired once and died shortly after.

Kampf was one of three men to commit suicide in September at gun ranges in the Bay Area, including two at one range in South San Francisco.

An Associated Press review of news archives, backed up by interviews with law enforcement officials, found that in the last 19 months there have been at least seven gun-range suicides and a murder-suicide in California, a double suicide in Arizona and single suicides in Oregon and Oklahoma.

Had Kampf wanted to buy a handgun, he would have faced the five-day waiting period and background check required by federal law. At shooting ranges, however, rented guns are usually available on the spot as long as the customer is sober, lucid and 18 or older.

Additionally, many gun range owners are instructing their employees to look for any sign of depression or suicide risk.

But Dr. Alan Brauer, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, said intent to commit suicide often is impossible to spot. A calm demeanor, for instance, is typical because most people relax once they’ve made the decision to kill themselves, he said. A ban on handgun rentals or, at the very least, a multiple-day waiting period would save lives, Brauer said.

“If they are not able to just walk into a range and get a firearm, it will take some greater planning,” Brauer said. “And the longer time required to plan, the more likely the decision will be altered.”

Brauer, like some law enforcement officials, sees high-profile violent suicides rising at an alarming rate.

“The drama of doing it in this way is a little like a person jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, which is both public and a strong public statement,” he said.

Some California lawmakers discussed rental restrictions last year after a man with a history of mental illness fatally shot another man with a rented gun before killing himself at a gun range in Stockton, said Dan Reeves, who oversees gun-control issues for Assemblyman Louis Caldera, a Los Angeles Democrat.

Caldera is considering introducing gun rental restrictions in the legislative session that begins in January, Reeves said.

“We have no problem with hunting and target shooting. . . . And we don’t want to take away what are seen as some good ol’ American pastimes,” Reeves said. “But when you’re randomly renting out handguns to any Tom, Dick or Harry, then it’s a real problem.”

Still, Reeves isn’t optimistic about prospects for such legislation, given the vigorous opposition to gun-control measures by such groups as the National Rifle Assn. and the Gun Owners of California. “Very few people want to take on the gun lobby in Sacramento,” he said.

One opponent to rental restrictions said it shouldn’t be a government issue because similar limits aren’t placed on other methods people use to kill themselves.

“Every year, we have a number of people who use leased automobiles to commit suicide . . . and yet the rental car companies continue to rent them,” said Kyle Kirwan, an attorney who has represented sporting gun manufacturers in liability suits.

Although jittery about copycat suicides, Baradat said he’d prefer to handle the suicide issue on his own.

He and the owner of the Jackson Arms gun range in South San Francisco, where two people killed themselves last month with rented guns, have voluntarily halted gun rentals.

Range owners in South San Francisco and in Milpitas, where six gun-range suicides have been recorded since 1984, have also worked with city officials to draft guidelines that help employees turn away those who appear at risk. And South San Francisco Mayor Jack Drago wants to take it a step further with an ordinance restricting or banning rentals.

Baradat, who has had two suicides at the San Rafael range since it opened three years ago, said both were “one-timers--kind of spur-of-the-moment guys.” But he thinks a member registry would be a better idea than a waiting period.

After things cool off, he plans to resume rentals--but only to regulars who carry membership cards.

Milpitas police Lt. Dennis Holmes has searched long and hard for a common thread in the six suicides in his city--anything that would help him prevent others.

Some of the Milpitas victims had physical ailments or histories of depression or mental illness, but none fit particular profiles of likely suicides. “The only one thing that was a straight line through all six was a rented firearm,” Holmes said.

But that doesn’t convince him that restrictions on rentals would help stop suicides.

“The bottom line is that if they’re really, really dedicated to ceasing their existence on this planet, they’re going to do it,” he said.