Bustamante Puts a Personal Face on Assembly’s Gun Control Debate

Gunfire recently claimed the life of a close relative and stray bullets sometimes force his own family to cower in their Fresno home, Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante said Wednesday, putting a poignantly personal face on legislative debates over gun violence.

“I hear gunfire with my family every single week in my neighborhood,” Bustamante told reporters.

The Democratic speaker lives with his wife and two daughters in a working-class area of Fresno and goes home from Sacramento on weekends.

“During the New Year’s and Fourth of July holidays,” with people marking the occasions by firing frequent gun bursts into the air, “it feels like My Lai,” he said, referring to the notorious site of a civilian massacre during the Vietnam War.

“I’ll tell you one thing that is absolutely the truth,” he said. “On those two nights my family is on the floor. They’re not sitting up in chairs or on the sofas or even on the bed in the house. Until that night is done, they’re staying on the floor because I’m afraid of stray bullets.”

Recently, he said, his cousin tried to break up a fight between two people attending the cousin’s 18th birthday party.

Gunfire broke out and his relative “died on the steps of his home on his 18th birthday,” the speaker said.

Bustamante’s remarks during a luncheon speech before the Sacramento Press Club were, an aide said, the first time that he has described in public the regularly recurring incidents of gun violence that have brought fear and grief within the personal orbit of one of the most powerful officeholders in the state.

It was with that violence in mind, Bustamante said, that he allowed a seemingly inconsequential debate to take place on the Assembly floor Monday in which Democrats argued among themselves over a nonbinding resolution complementing a controversial gun safety program.

Bustamante said that he realized the internal bickering would be perceived as a split among Democrats and a sign of a weak speaker--an occasional criticism of Bustamante. But he “took the risk” of allowing the debate because Assembly members felt strongly about the dangers of firearms, and so does he, he said.

Families everywhere “are touched by gun violence,” Bustamante said. When the problem comes up on the Assembly floor, “I don’t know if I always want to stop the debates.”

Nearing 100 days as the first Latino speaker in California history, Bustamante claimed “some tremendous progress,” notably his attempts to “remove some of the poison” dividing Republicans and Democrats in the lower house.

He said he made it a point to deal fairly in making committee assignments and housekeeping matters with minority Republicans, who lost control of the Assembly in November’s election.

“I don’t have a dictatorial leadership style,” the speaker said. “Some people think of it as wishy-washy. I like to think of it as thoughtful.”

He said his aim is to build consensus among Assembly members as lawmakers prepare to debate major issues such as welfare reform and improving educational opportunities.

Bustamante said the Assembly Human Services Committee, chaired by Assemblywoman Dion Aroner (D-Berkeley), has begun work on welfare reform and is prepared to push for features that Democrats want.

Among them, he said, is finding “real jobs” for the estimated 700,000 recipients to be forced off the welfare rolls in California.

Bustamante said he was hopeful that “welfare reform would be brought to some kind of conclusion this year.”

With his consensus style, Bustamante has gained a reputation for an ability to work with Republicans, but he said that in his first meeting with Gov. Pete Wilson, he found Wilson “a little cold, frankly.”

He said he told the governor there are areas of agreement on welfare that should allow Republicans and Democrats to “ratchet down some of the political wrangling” over reforming the system.

“I think he was surprised by my bluntness,” Bustamante said.

In later meetings with Wilson, the speaker said, he learned that there are differences between him and the governor, “in some cases dramatic” such as on the state’s responsibilities to the poorest of the poor.

But Bustamante said that in the last of the meetings, an informal dinner at a Sacramento restaurant, he and governor lighted up cigars together.