Mike Feuer

Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer came into office two years ago as a progressive, Harvard-educated attorney and the former head of Bet Tzedek legal clinic. He replaced Zev Yaroslavsky, who resigned to run for county supervisor. Although Feuer’s election campaign focused primarily on his promises to adopt tougher ethics rules for city lawmakers, he also talked about his interest in cracking down on gun violence. In the past few weeks, Feuer has attempted to do exactly that by proposing a slew of new ordinances aimed at reducing the number of shooting deaths in Los Angeles. In this interview, he talks about his proposed legislation and why he thinks it will make a difference.

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Question: Can you explain your recent motions on gun control and explain what your goals are?

Answer: At the outset, it’s most important to emphasize that for the first time we have a number of cities within metropolitan Los Angeles working together on a common agenda related to stemming gun violence. There are mayors or city council members in cities from San Fernando to Long Beach who are committed to advancing an agenda that begins with the measures that have been introduced.

The motions that are on the table now are designed to take steps to reduce access to ammunition among criminals, and improve the safety of guns that are held by lawful gun owners. We also want to improve the standards by which gun shops, pawnbrokers and others conduct their day-to-day business when it comes to guns.

One proposal is to ban the sale of ammunition to convicted felons and other dangerous criminals. To effectuate that goal, we would put in place an ammunition permit program, under which one would submit an application to the Department of Justice, which would perform a background check to assure that one does not have a violent criminal history. That information would then be returned to the local police department and a permit would be issued to those without violent criminal histories.

Next, there is a package of measures that address the safety of guns and standards for gun store owners. The first is a requirement that trigger locks be sold when a gun is sold. The reason for that is the number of accidental shootings that take place in the homes of lawful gun owners who aren’t aware, for example, that the gun was left loaded and accessible to a youngster.

Second, there is a provision that requires thumb printing along with registration when one purchases ammunition. Los Angeles currently has a skeletal ammunition registration law on the books. But the police have told us that there’s no way to effectively track the purchaser without a thumbprint or some other identifying characteristic.

Another requirement is that there be background checks of employees of gun store owners and pawnbrokers who sell guns. This requirement would reduce the likelihood of guns being transferred by gun stores and pawnbrokers to those who shouldn’t have them.

Still another requirement would be to preclude the transfer of [cheaply made guns known as] Saturday night specials through licensed gun shops. There’s a loophole in the law regarding Saturday night specials currently that would enable one to transfer the guns to someone else, particularly through an intermediary, a gun store, and we ought to be precluding that from happening in the future.

The last item on the agenda is a ban on the sale of magazines containing 10 or more rounds of ammunition. The federal government has banned the manufacture of those magazines. But there is no prohibition on the sale of existing stock. We should be prohibiting the sale of magazines whose key purpose is to shoot a number of bullets in rapid succession, which is to say to use one’s gun aggressively, rather than in a defensive manner.

Q: You’ve been in office now for two years here. Why are you coming out now with this package?

A: We see the impact of gun violence on our streets [in] the way the people are compelled to sleep in bathtubs in some neighborhoods. People shouldn’t be compelled to live this way. The North Hollywood incident riveted public attention on the issue of guns and violence in our society, and it seems to me that when we have the ability to focus public attention on this issue, we ought to seize that opportunity to try to enact reasonable measures to reduce violence on our streets.

Q: Since the state has ultimate jurisdiction on gun control, aren’t you talking about a backdoor way to allow local governments to make gun control laws?

A: The state has the power to regulate the sale of guns. But there are attorney general opinions that point out that local jurisdictions are free to regulate the sale of ammunition. It is already state law that a convicted felon should not be in possession of ammunition. But there is nothing in state law that precludes the sale to such a felon or other dangerous criminal. The ammunition permit proposal effectuates the state goal of trying to prevent dangerous criminals from getting their hands on ammunition. So I view the ammunition permit proposal as highly consistent with what has been the law in the state of California for some time.

None of us would argue that any of the particular provisions on the table now is in itself going to eradicate the gun violence problem. They each are intrinsically substantively important. In the aggregate, they’re steps in the right direction. The power of this approach is the concerted effort among leaders from many cities taken together.

Q: I’m sure you have gotten calls or have been confronted by people from the National Rifle Assn. who say this really is not going do a whole lot of good. They say people will still be able to buy guns or bullets on the black market. They say that all this is going to do is add another layer of bureaucracy for law-abiding gun owners.

A: But by making it harder for criminals to get their hands on ammunition, we will prevent some crimes from taking place. Someone isn’t going to get killed because a thug was unable to quickly get their hands on ammunition as opposed to walking into a sporting goods store, as they can now, and buying as many rounds as they would like. That deterrence counts.

Let’s look at metropolitan Los Angeles, as an example, where some 1,400 county residents lost their lives last year to guns. This is not a public safety issue. It is a public health issue. When one examines California, there are more people under the age of 24 who are killed by guns than die from car accidents, AIDS, cardiovascular disease and other causes put together.

Q: Detractors also say that these restrictions are going to make it more expensive for low-income folks to defend themselves.

A: Let’s look at the motions that I’ve introduced and examine that part. Trigger locks cost as little as $10. It’s worth $10 to any household to assure that a young child doesn’t get his or her hands on a loaded gun and inadvertently shoot him or herself or a friend.

The requirement of an ammunition permit before one purchases bullets will be a one-time expense. We don’t know exactly how much it will cost except that we know that the Department of Justice says it costs $32 to run a background check including a thumbprint. We’re not talking about astronomical sums of money here.

One of the premises of regulating Saturday night specials is that the guns themselves are poorly made in ways that could lead to injury to their user. The guns either don’t work or the alloy is not strong enough and something bad happens to the user. We as a society make the decision all the time to regulate markets, even when there is some expense associated with it, because we don’t think people should be exposed to certain risks.

Our society regulates a number of products not nearly as dangerous much more extensively. We require that when cars are sold, they have seat belts in them, as an example. The requirement makes cars cost more. But that’s a decision we’ve made because we deem the safety of the occupant so important that requiring they spend some extra money to purchase the car is worthwhile. The same principle applies here.

Q: Some people would argue that you are trying to enact your own gun control laws because you can’t get the state Legislature to put tougher laws on the books. True?

A: We are attempting to take the most aggressive steps lawfully possible to address gun violence. There is nothing in state law that precludes any of the measures that I’ve introduced from being enacted. The day may come when state government says to local jurisdictions, ‘You know public safety in your communities better than we do and therefore we will acknowledge that you should be able to regulate guns on your streets.’ That day hasn’t come yet because of the potency of the NRA in Sacramento. I would prefer that these important rules were emanating from Sacramento and there would be no need for local jurisdictions to seek these regulations. But we’re not there. As I said before, I will not stand idly by and let gun violence continue to escalate locally when there are things that we can do.