GOP Getting Outdrawn on the Gun Issue

In California, you don’t mess with a man’s car or his guns.

--Pat Brown’s political advice to his son Jerry

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Cars and guns can be precious playthings, as the Governors Brown fully understood. Especially for the macho man who gets turned on jamming his foot to the floor or squeezing a trigger.

Both car and gun can be deadly, but there are vital distinctions, including this very significant difference: Durability.

A car rusts, falls apart and winds up in the junk heap. A gun--sustained with solvent, cotton barrel patches and a moisture-proof case--survives for decades, centuries.

Guns pile up and proliferate in closets, in night stands and under beds. They are not biodegradable. They are toxic toys.

And that might be OK, except that they often get used carelessly. Even by “law-abiding citizens.” And they get stolen by bad guys.

“When someone breaks into your home, the first thing he does is go to the dresser and pull open the drawer to see if there’s a gun because he knows there’s a market for it,” says Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles). Caldera advocates requiring trigger locks, which he believes not only would prevent accidental shootings but discourage thefts.

The state Justice Department’s list of stolen firearms numbers about 300,000. Nobody can guess how many hundreds of thousands of additional gun thefts have gone unreported.

But there are tens of millions of weapons out there--enough to keep us firing eternally even if we banned all gun manufacturing starting today. The best estimate seems to be around 220 million firearms nationwide. Figure 25 million to 30 million in California.

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren rejoiced recently when he announced that Californians purchased only 353,872 guns in 1996, down from a record 642,197 in 1993, the year after the L.A. riots.

Because of the declining crime rate, Lungren reasoned, fewer people believe they need to buy a gun for protection. Of course, he added: “It is possible that with more than 3 million firearms purchased in the last six years, [there is] some degree of market saturation.”

Indeed, you’d think that a couple of guns, on average, for each California household would suffice.

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Any rational person has to believe this is ludicrous--not only the number of guns, but particularly their type. Those AK-47s used by the North Hollywood bank robbers last Friday were fully automatic battlefield weapons capable of firing 600 bullets per minute. In effect, these were machine guns that have been outlawed since the days of Bonnie and Clyde and Al Capone.

“So what are you going to do?” asks Lungren, echoing society’s frustration. “Pass another law saying they’re illegal?”

Lungren is a gun control centrist who pleases neither the gun control advocates nor the gun worshipers. He supports legislation to reduce the capacity of giant gun magazines--about 15 rounds should do it--and opposes Republican efforts to take away the sheriffs’ control over concealed weapons permits.

GOP Assembly members voted last year to make it easier to obtain sidearm permits and, in turn, made themselves fat targets for Democrats in the November elections.

“Guns did a lot of damage to Republicans,” recalls GOP consultant Ray McNally, whose pro-gun Senate candidate, then-Assemblyman Phil Hawkins, lost to Sen. Betty Karnette (D-Long Beach).

“The bottom line is that increasing numbers of voters are troubled by the proliferation of guns,” McNally says. “What Democrats are doing with the gun issue is linking it to the crime issue, which Republicans always used to own. All of a sudden, Republicans are on the wrong side of a crime issue, which is the increasing availability of guns.”

Guns have become lethal for GOP politicians.

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It’s ironic that more than three decades later, most Republicans are following the outdated advice of Democrat Pat Brown. Most Democrats, meanwhile, have moved on to represent a congested, gang-threatened, urban electorate that neither plinks cans in the back field nor fears the Commies will land and confiscate its private arsenal.

Democrats still are trying to control assault weapons, with little help from the GOP or gun lobby. Assemblyman Don Perata (D-Alameda) has introduced a bill to define an assault rifle by its Rambo characteristics. Now, it’s defined by make and model, a loophole that invites copycatting.

Rather than thwart and smirk, gun lobbyists could offer their expertise and try to help control assault rifles and all firearms proliferation. If not, they could see in the next century what the gunners fear most: Confiscation. Not from the Commies, but from fed-up fellow Americans.