7 Anti-Gun Bills Clear 1st Hurdle in State Assembly

Democratic lawmakers, launching what lobbyists for gun owners see as a major attack on their rights, won passage of no fewer than seven gun control bills in their first committee test Tuesday.

Among the most sweeping measures to win Assembly committee approval were bills permitting cities and counties to enact local ordinances that go further than state law in banning the sale or manufacture of guns; a measure to bar the sale and manufacture statewide of cheap handguns, more commonly called Saturday night specials, and a bill to outlaw bulk purchases of handguns that limits individuals to one handgun purchase every 30 days.

Convinced that voters now strongly favor gun control legislation, Democrats have introduced an ambitious package of gun bills, including measures imposing new restrictions on semiautomatic weapons, making it a crime to carry a gun while drunk, and increasing penalties for failing to keep guns from children.

The opening volley came in the Assembly Public Safety Committee, where the Democrat-sponsored bills cleared their first legislative hurdle largely on party line votes, signaling what probably will be a major political debate that will go on for the next two years.

“This [anti-gun package] is an absolute priority. Gun violence is the No. 1 public safety issue in California,” said Assembly majority floor leader Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles).

Villaraigosa is carrying four such measures, including one that won initial approval Tuesday that would permit cities and counties to license gun owners and register all guns, and another that would make possession of a gun while intoxicated either a felony or a misdemeanor, depending upon the circumstances.

A lobbyist for the National Rifle Assn. criticized the Democrats’ package.

“They are neither well-thought-out, nor well-drafted,” NRA lobbyist Stephen Helsley said of the bills.

Helsley and other pro-gun lobbyists are mounting a major counterattack. A letter sent by the NRA last week called on its members to urge their legislators to kill the measures.

“Attacks on your 2nd Amendment rights have never been stronger,” the missive stated.

Proponents and opponents of the anti-gun bills say it is unclear whether any of the more ambitious measures will win approval in the 80-member Assembly.

Although most Democratic lawmakers favor stricter gun control, at least five Assembly Democrats and other Senate Democrats are supportive of gun owners’ views and received campaign donations from gun groups in the 1996 campaign.

One, Assemblyman Roderick Wright (D-Los Angeles), is carrying one of the NRA’s pet proposals. It urges schools to adopt the NRA’s Eddie the Eagle gun safety campaign.

“I’m not sure there are 41 votes for gun control. It becomes very close,” said Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles).

Republicans, meanwhile, continue to push measures to expand the rights of gun owners, including one that is a revival of NRA-backed legislation offered last year to permit almost any adult who has not committed a felony to carry a concealed weapon.

“Firearms have the protection of the Constitution,” said Assemblyman Larry Bowler (R-Elk Grove), who like the other GOP committee members voted against almost all of the gun control bills.

In what quickly became known as “Gun Day” in the Capitol, dozens of members of anti-gun groups held a news conference and attempted to buttonhole legislators to gather support for their cause.

Lawmakers brought in victims and surviving family members to the Public Safety Committee to give often-emotional testimony about gun-related injuries and deaths.

One victim was one of the legislators who is carrying two of the measures--Assemblyman Jack Scott (D-Altadena). His son, Adam, was shot and killed in 1993 when a friend at a party was showing off a shotgun and accidentally fired it.

“I don’t want anybody else to go through what I did,” Scott said in an interview. “There is no way to describe what destruction that brings to a family. There is such a waste of human potential. It doesn’t need to be that way.”

Scott’s main bill would write into state law a lower court ruling affirming the right of cities such as West Hollywood to ban gun sales. At least 32 locales have adopted local anti-gun ordinances, but those measures are being attacked in the courts on the grounds that they go further than state law.

Another of the more ambitious bills seeks to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of Saturday night specials. Federal law bans the import of such guns from overseas, but the state bill would have a significant additional impact because a large percentage of the Saturday night specials manufactured in the United States are made in Southern California.

Given their price--as little as $50 for small-caliber models, to $125 for more powerful ones--the small handguns are the preferred models of street criminals, experts say.

Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles), who is carrying the bill along with Villaraigosa, said the guns are composed of soft metal and are so badly made that they misfire and have exploded in the hands of people firing them.

The bill also would require that guns made in California have several safety features, including trigger locks, a design that would require more strength to pull the trigger than most young children possess and an indicator that would show when a gun is loaded. Such features would add to the cost.

“It has ‘elitist’ written all over it, but then the anti-gun movement tends to be elitist,” said Bill Saracino of the Gunowners of California, one of the groups that is lobbying against the measure.

When Assemblyman Jan Goldsmith (R-Poway), leading opponents in Tuesday’s committee hearing, declared that the bill would preclude law-abiding people who have little money from obtaining guns for their own protection, Assemblyman Carl Washington (D-Paramount) pointed out that he represents one of the poorest parts of the state.

“These guns probably make up 75% of the crimes in my district,” Washington said, casting a vote for the measure.

The bill would strike especially hard at five Southern California manufacturers that are the dominant producers of the nation’s cheap handguns. Four of the five are owned by members of a single family, whose father, George Jennings, started manufacturing inexpensive guns in 1970, according to a lengthy report by Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency room physician who is director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis.

In past years, the companies made 80% of the guns. More recently, manufacturers in Florida and Ohio have begun making such pistols.