Gun Control Backers Set Sights on Bullets

Just a week after Pasadena declared ineffective its law requiring people to sign a log book before they buy bullets, a coalition of Southern California lawmakers is launching a new attack with a battery of new local gun control measures, including the most aggressive anti-ammunition proposal in the state.

Their unofficial motto could well be a twist on the classic slogan against gun control: Guns don’t kill people--bullets do.

Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer plans to introduce groundbreaking legislation Wednesday to require people to pass a background check and buy a permit before purchasing bullets, then leave their thumbprint at the gun store with each sale.

Leaders of many surrounding cities--including Pasadena--say they will propose a similar package of rules, including requirements that all gun shop employees pass background checks and that childproof trigger locks be sold with each weapon, as well as a ban on the sale of magazines containing more than 10 rounds and a special tax on guns.

Gun owners and some law enforcement experts contend that such restrictions unfairly target law-abiding people and fail to reach criminals who can easily get their ammunition on the black market. But politicians say it is the least they can do to confront what they see as an epidemic of violence on the streets.

“By making it harder to get ammo, we are making it more likely that some crimes that would have been committed won’t be,” said Feuer, who sits on the council’s public safety committee and has persuaded officials from Santa Monica to San Fernando to join him.

“I know that [each] of these individually, and all of them collectively, are just steps in the right direction and not a complete solution,” he added. “To say that we shouldn’t take these steps because they’re not a complete solution is to be paralyzed in the face of what is wrecking our society.”

The budding coalition, which will stand together at a news conference in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, signals a new focus for the gun-control movement, which has increasingly turned to cities and counties out of frustration over the pro-gun lobby’s influence in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

“The whole issue of local governments taking this on is really a function of local government filling a vacuum,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who introduced his own package of anti-gun proposals in March. “At the local level, people are more influential--not the gun lobby. At the local level, when somebody gets shot, when a police officer is gunned down . . . it becomes a communitywide tragedy that overshadows the political arguments that any one interest group chooses to put forward.”

California law preempts municipalities from regulating most items surrounding weapons. In recent years, local officials have lobbied hard to overturn that preemption--bills are currently pending in the Legislature to do so--while trying to chip away at its periphery with whatever rules they are allowed to pass at home.

Most significant was the trend last year for municipalities to ban the sale of cheap handguns known as Saturday night specials, an approach recently upheld in court. To date, 33 cities--including Los Angeles and several others in Southern California--have prohibited those guns, and a proposed statewide ban is being debated in Sacramento.

Advocates hope the home-grown strategy will have twin effects: reducing gun violence in the communities that pass the laws, while increasing pressure on state and federal leaders to overcome the powerful pro-gun lobby. They point to California’s history with anti-smoking legislation, in which there was a domino effect of municipalities banning smoking in restaurants that ultimately led to a statewide law, as a blueprint.

“If it was one city by [itself], and nobody else doing it, yes, it would be very easy to evade,” acknowledged Luis Tolley of Handgun Control Inc. “If you do it on a regional basis, you’re going to have a direct impact on criminals. Really, ultimately, we need it on a federal basis. But you start locally.”

If passed, Feuer’s ammunition proposals would be the most aggressive in the state, and perhaps the nation, Tolley said. Similar proposals were offered by City Council members Rita Walters and Mark Ridley-Thomas in 1991, but they died because they were presented with items that would have violated the state preemption.

Eight California cities, including Los Angeles, have passed ordinances requiring people to sign a logbook when they buy bullets, though Pasadena tentatively repealed its version just last week, saying it was ineffective. But Feuer’s idea would go much further.

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First, it would plug what he sees as a loophole in state law: People prohibited from buying guns, including felons and mental incompetents, are not allowed to own ammunition, but there is no specific rule preventing them from buying it.

So Feuer wants ammunition-seekers to pass a background check similar to the one required for gun purchases and to get a permit from the Los Angeles Police Department (paying a fee to offset the cost of administering this registration). Then, to put teeth in the logbook provision, he would make customers leave their thumbprints, not just signatures, so police can track people in investigations.

Billie Weiss, an epidemiologist with the county Department of Health who has worked with both Yaroslavsky and Feuer on anti-gun proposals, lauded the approach.

“When we go after malaria, we don’t go after the parasite, we go after the vector of the infection, which is the mosquito,” she said. “We have to go after the vector of this fatal epidemic, and that’s the gun. A gun without bullets obviously can’t do anything. It’s a way of really making the vector ineffective so it can no longer transmit the epidemic.”

But Joel Friedman, president of the local chapter of the National Rifle Assn., said he believes the ammunition-permit system would violate the spirit of a federal law prohibiting the government from establishing lists of who owns weapons.

Besides, he and several gun-store employees said, the restrictions would be useless in preventing criminals from getting bullets from unauthorized dealers, while unfairly hassling gun users.

“It comes to a point where you decide, ‘Gee, I’m going to go hunting, I’m going to go target-shooting today,’ and all of a sudden you’re made to feel like a drug abuser or a sex offender,” said Friedman, who lives in Pasadena and owns a bakery. “You’ve got to fill this out. You’ve got to wait. You’ve got to put a thumbprint. You’ve got to show a card. It has the atmosphere of making you feel like you’re doing something wrong.”

LAPD interim Chief Bayan Lewis said it’s crucial to have surrounding cities join Los Angeles in the effort to keep lawbreakers from simply getting ammunition elsewhere. He lauded the thumbprint proposal, and said the permits would be a good idea as long as the background checks, which must be coordinated with the Department of Justice, do not create a huge paperwork backlog and unreasonable waiting period.

“You’ve got to start somewhere,” agreed Deputy Chief John White, who oversees specialized detectives, including the LAPD’s gun unit. “Let’s assume . . . you have to give your fingerprint when you buy ammunition, and one person says, ‘Well, I’m not going to buy ammunition,’ and it saves one or two lives. Is that cost-effective? I think it is.”

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Privately, some officers were less confident, calling the new proposals a “dog-and-pony show” by politicians, “window-dressing” that does not confront the real problems of violence.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan could not be reached for comment. His chief of staff, Robin Kramer, said Riordan would “review all the proposals . . . looking for their street-level effectiveness” in the weeks ahead.

In addition to the bullet registration, Feuer and his counterparts in surrounding areas want to:

* Require that trigger locks, which costs from $10 to $100, be sold along with every weapon. Tolley pointed out that many consumer products, from cars with seat belts to aspirin with childproof containers, come with required safety devices; President Clinton gave trigger locks a boost by mentioning them in his State of the Union address. Gun stores and the NRA have not aggressively opposed trigger locks.

* Mandate background checks for all employees of gun dealers, banning people who are under 21, have recently had a gun license revoked or denied, are not allowed to own weapons or have been convicted of even a misdemeanor firearms offense. Other jurisdictions have narrowed this provision to deal only with people who directly sell weapons because it created too big a hardship on large department stores that have gun sections.

* Ban the sale of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. Federal law already prevents the manufacture of these items, but dealers are allowed to sell out their stock. Gun store employees, Friedman and even Lewis questioned the usefulness of this provision, saying that experienced shooters can rotate several 10-round magazines instead of using a larger-capacity device, to similar effect.

* Tighten the Saturday night special ban to preclude a current owner from selling the weapons through a gun dealer. Opponents say this violates people’s rights to sell their property.

* Extend or establish a special gross-receipts tax for businesses that sell guns and ammunition. Los Angeles has such a tax, raising about $70,000 a year, but it is scheduled to expire in 1998, so Feuer proposes asking voters to renew it.

“These are just feel-good legislation for the people who are proposing them. Everything they’re trying to do is not directed at the heart of the matter,” said one gun store employee. “It’s not going to stop any criminal from getting [weapons and] bullets. They can go to the underground, it’s readily available to them. All it is is another form of harassing John Good Citizen.”

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Gun Control Efforts

Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer and a coalition of leaders from surrounding cities plan to introduce legislation this week that would:

* Require permits for purchasing ammunition and thumbprints with every purchase of bullets

* Ban the sale of mazagines that fire more than 10 rounds

* Tighten restrictions on the sale of cheap handguns

* Mandate background checks for employees of gun dealers

* Force the sale of trigger locks with every weapon

A Statewide Trend

The move continues an era of activism on gun-contol issues by local cities and counties, such as last year’s wave of ordinances in Southern California to outlaw the sale of cheap handguns known as Saturday Night Specials. Municipalities throughout California have passed restrictions on gun dealers, such as requiring them to carry liability insurance and have a stable location, prohibiting them from residential zones, and mandating background checks for all employees. Some have also added registration logs for purchase of ammunition. Here is a look at gun regulation efforts statewide:

* Law in Effect

** Under Consideration

*** State/federal action urged

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Ban on Limits on Trigger Gross Saturday Dealers Limits Locks to Receipts City or Night or Am- on Gun Be Sold Tax on Gun County Specials munition shows With Guns Dealers Alameda * * Alameda Co. * * ** ** ** Albany * * Antioch * Artesia * Belmont * Berkeley * * * ** Beverly Hills * Compton * Concord * Contra Costa Co. * * * * Daly City * * * El Cerrito * * ** El Monte * Emeryville * * Escondido * Fremont * * * Gilroy * Glendale * Hayward * * * Hercules * * Huntington Park * Inglewood * La Puente ** Lake Forest ** Lafayette * * Livermore ** * Long Beach *** Los Angeles * * ** * L.A. County ** ** ** Monterey Park * Oakland * * ** ** Orange * Palo Alto * Pasadena * ** Piedmont ** ** Pinole * Pleasanton ** * ** Pomona * * Richmond * * * Riverside * Sacramento * * Salinas * * San Carlos * San Diego ** * San Diego Co. ** San Francisco * * * * San Joaquin * San Jose * ** * * San Leandro * * * ** San Mateo * * San Mateo Co. * * * San Pablo * * * Santa Ana * Santa Clara Co. * Santa Clarita ** Santa Cruz * ** Santa Cruz Co. * ** Santa Monica * * * Santa Rosa ** S. San Francisco * Stockton * Union City * West Covina * West Hollywood * * *

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Source: Handgun Control Inc.