Simi’s Chief Says Relaxed Gun Rules Hitting Mark

So far, so good.

Nine months after this city’s police chief passed rules making it easier for residents to legally carry handguns, the program is working well, police say:

The number of permit-holding gun carriers has more than doubled, from 21 to 53 and rising.

No concealed-weapon permits have fallen into the hands of known felons or suspected lunatics.

And no permit holder has shot anyone.

Chief Randy Adams said he has rejected one applicant on psychological grounds and a handful more for lying on their applications. But everyone else who complied with the rules has been issued a permit, he said.

“I think it’s been doing exactly what I said it would do when I set it up,” Adams said.

“It’s allowing a lot more citizens--that are upstanding citizens with clean records and have been tested to be mentally and emotionally stable, that feel they have a need to have a concealed weapon--to be able to carry one.”

Before Adams took office in August 1995, Simi Valley’s would-be permit holders had to convince often-reluctant police chiefs that they had a life-threatening job--or indeed, threats on their life.

State law was vague, requiring applicants only to show a clean criminal record, “good moral character” and “good cause” why they needed a gun.

It left police chiefs and sheriffs to make the final decision, and Simi Valley’s chiefs routinely denied permits to all but a select few.

But Adams changed all that last March with a new set of clear-cut rules: Anyone with $1 million in liability insurance who could pass a psychological test, a gun training course and fingerprint and criminal background check, and show good cause for needing to carry a loaded gun could have a permit.

On the surface, Simi Valley’s newest handgun permit holders have many similarities:

Except for vehemently pro-gun Councilwoman Sandi Webb and one other woman, all the permit carriers are men. And every bearer’s permit lists “personal protection” as the justification for carrying a loaded gun.

Yet the real reasons vary.

There are professional bodyguards. Fearful commuters who frequent rougher parts of Los Angeles. Wary businessmen who carry large amounts of cash. And a generous salting of 2nd Amendment fundamentalists.

Cyber-cafe owner Sam Tewfik repairs computers late at night in deserted industrial areas in the San Fernando Valley. He says he likes the feeling of security he gets from a holstered gun.

“A lot of [jobs], I don’t get out until 3 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “Several times, I’ve felt very uncomfortable. I bought the gun in case I need to defend myself.”

He carries a .357, a .45 or a 9-millimeter semiautomatic, depending on where he works: “You have to be smart to decide what kind of gun to carry where. If you’re going to be indoors, you don’t want to carry a gun that can go through five or six walls. If you’re outdoors, bigger bullets might not work as well. That’s part of what you learn in the classes.”

Security consultant Thomas Morris says he is a bodyguard for the likes of Roseanne, Janet Jackson and Michael J. Fox and protects other celebrities against obsessed fans and stalkers.

“We’re the ones that are the direct barrier from [stalkers] accomplishing their goal in life,” said Morris. “I’ve placed numerous people under citizen’s arrest, and one way or another, they all say the same thing: ‘I’ll go through you to get to them.’ ”

He adds, “With the people I’ve either arrested or stopped from seeing [celebrities], I’ve got to make sure my family’s protected.”

Attorney Richard Kunz often drives to sheriff’s stations in rougher parts of Los Angeles County to represent deputies in internal investigations. He carries a gun in the car or on his person, depending on the need.

“I would only use it if I intended to use deadly force, and I’d only use deadly force if the life of myself or one of my family members were in danger,” said Kunz, the father of two young daughters.

But is it worth the chance he might kill someone?

“I think surviving a potentially deadly confrontation when I’m alone at night in South-Central Los Angeles is worth the risk to me,” said Kunz, who earned his permit in June. “I don’t anticipate carrying it with me in Simi Valley, and with our low crime rate, I don’t see it as a necessity. But if I’m in a dangerous part of [Los Angeles] and I’m confronted by gang members, it’d be nice to be able to defend myself.”

It may seem ironic that so many residents of the third-safest city in the U.S. feel compelled to carry loaded guns.

But many folks in this gun-friendly bedroom community must commute to Los Angeles. And most permit holders say they obtained permits here so they can carry guns elsewhere--specifically in Los Angeles County.

Celebrity bodyguard Dennis Bridwell sees it this way:

“It’s a safe community for reasons that these people don’t give in to crime, they don’t tolerate it. They moved here because they wanted a safe community, and they band together to make sure that happens. . . . But they still need to be able to travel to work or around the state safely.”

Before Adams changed the permit policy, building contractor Marc Slack was one of the few who already held a handgun permit.

He had tried and failed to get one several times, until about five years ago: His company’s plumber was working an emergency call in Chatsworth, plugging a water leak at 3 a.m. Someone fatally shot the man in the back of the head and stole his truck full of tools.

Two weeks later, Slack recalled, a motorist in the San Fernando Valley was shot to death in a carjacking.

“After the second gentleman was shot and killed . . . I wanted to be as safe as possible,” said Slack, who now works as a real estate agent. He applied again, citing the killings, and then-Chief L. Paul Miller issued the permit.

Miller said that he had always been wary of permitting civilians to go armed but had a change of heart shortly before his 1993 retirement.

“I felt that as long as things were under control, there was not a need to have a lot of permits out,” said Miller, now a councilman. “But what changed my mind was the proliferation of gang violence not just here in our city, but elsewhere. . . . What would really trouble me is if people were having to get gun permits because they weren’t safe here in Simi Valley.”

For Sandi Webb, Simi Valley’s vocally pro-gun councilwoman, the success of the permit program is something of a victory over the past.

Before Adams retooled the process, the Police Department gave out permits few and far between.

Webb and other past applicants said that police staff always met their requests with apathy, inaction and rebuffs such as, “Don’t bother, you’re not going to get it.”

“My whole problem with the [past] system was that officials and people with friends were the ones who got them,” she said. “I didn’t want any special favors.”

She still chafes at the requirements--and the costs, which can total several hundred dollars--as do most other permit holders interviewed by The Times.

“The 2nd Amendment [of the U.S. Constitution] says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The permit is infringement,” she said. “I have had a real argument with the business of having to come up with these big reasons why I should have a permit. Because I’m an honest person and I want one. I don’t see that I should have to have a reason.”

But for Simi aerospace engineer David Crisalli, it’s a simple equation: He would rather have a gun in his hand than a hole in his family.

Crisalli said he illegally carried a loaded handgun for years when he worked in risky warehouse districts or traveled through crime-ridden neighborhoods--but continued pushing the Simi Valley Police Department to issue him a permit.

When Adams replaced vague discretion with hard-and-fast rules, Crisalli quickly complied.

He submitted to fingerprinting and a criminal background check. He lined up $1 million in liability insurance. And he reluctantly shelled out more than $400 for a three-hour psychological exam, long training sessions at a gun range, and a $76 permit fee. But he finally got his permit.

The process was “unduly difficult and restrictive,” he said.

“[The rules] are there to be a filter, I think, against the occasional nut case that walks into the Police Department,” Crisalli acknowledged. “But I said to the chief, ‘The guys you need to worry about are the guys that don’t ordinarily come in there and ask you for permission to carry a weapon.’ . . . There may be 53 people who carry with the permission of the Police Department, but you’d be surprised how many carry without the permission of the Police Department.”

Adams said he believes the permit holders far outnumber the lawbreakers.

“I would like to think that most of our citizens are law-abiding and respect what the rules are,” he said. “And if they feel they have the desire or the need to carry a concealed weapon, they will properly apply. And if they go through the process we have, they can obtain a permit.”