In Gun Control Battles, Casualties Can Be Heavy

In the bare-fisted arena of California gun politics, there’s no such thing as a sure-fire winner. Low blows are not uncommon.

Into this rough and tumble world barged upstart Assemblyman Don Perata, an Oakland Democrat. The former Alameda County supervisor, although just a freshman, is known to possess some of the sharpest elbows in the Capitol.

At the start of the Assembly’s session this year, Perata proposed a sweeping overhaul of California’s landmark 1989 assault weapons law, hoping to close loopholes that gun manufacturers have exploited to flood the state with thousands of the rapid-fire weapons.

He seemed on the cusp of a coup.

Perata had won the crucial backing of law enforcement because of the bill’s public safety ramifications. The Assembly narrowly passed the measure in an initial vote in June. The Senate followed suit three months later.

But when the bill returned to the Assembly for final approval, things fell apart. Perata no longer had the votes. In the end, he was forced to withdraw a bill that only months before appeared destined for the state’s criminal codes.

“I’m amazed,” Perata said, “how much resistance there is to an issue that is demonstrably popular among all voters, and for which there really is no arguable, defensible downside.”

The demise of Perata’s measure provides a case study of the fragility of firearms legislation--of the unusual strategies that are employed and of the nasty wars that are waged. It also shows that when the issue is one as politically charged as gun control, the combatants die hard, deriving strength from the knowledge that they will be butting heads again in next year’s state elections.

Democrats Pin Hopes on Gun Control

Democrats in Sacramento have come to see gun control as a kind of magic bullet. They are convinced it was a chief reason they regained control of the Assembly in the 1996 elections and strengthened their hold in the state Senate.

A week after taking their oaths of office, about a dozen emboldened Democratic lawmakers gathered in a Capitol side room to plot their gun control agenda. The organizer was Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles).

Caldera had been championing gun control since 1992, longer than anyone in the lower house. Prevented from running again by term limits, he wanted to take one more shot at banning the manufacture and sale of cheap, easily concealable handguns, most of which are produced by about half a dozen Southern California firms.

Caldera believed that it was crucial to limit the number of gun control measures so advocates could focus their efforts. That would not happen.

Perata, sitting at the head of the table, already had introduced the outlines of his assault weapons measure, an action he took a week before the meeting, on the first day lawmakers could propose bills.

Perata, like Caldera, was no newcomer to gunfights.

Since 1986, when Perata won a seat on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, he has been an outspoken opponent of assault weapons, decrying the violence and fear they have brought to his working-class constituents. Among other things, he held hearings on the use of assault weapons by drug dealers and tried to convince judges in Oakland to impose the highest possible bail on suspects who wield them.

“If everybody was back to using baseball bats and brass knuckles,” he said, “my district would be a better place. Life is cheap here.”

Perata was determined to resume his crusade in the Assembly, even though he himself had reservations that the introduction of too many gun control bills could backfire.

“Everybody had an idea,” Perata recalls of the Capitol strategy session. “Nobody was a big enough dog in the pen to say, ‘We’re going to do [the handgun and assault weapons bills] and nothing else.’ There was no coherent political strategy.”

In fact, by the time the Legislature was in full swing, there were two measures to ban cheap handguns. Two more sought to give cities and counties the power to restrict guns and even ban them. Other bills sought to raise safety standards on firearms, keep guns away from gang members, force more gun registration and strengthen penalties for misuse of firearms. In all, Democrats pushed 18 major gun control bills.

In February, as lawmakers began to consider the bills, Perata was handed ammunition for his effort: the nationally televised North Hollywood bank heist, in which two robbers armed with assault weapons illegally modified to make them fully automatic forced police to retreat to a gun shop for high-powered guns of their own.

“As ugly as it is to say,” Perata said, “every time a North Hollywood goes down, we add another three, four points to our let’s-ban-these-guns column.”

The 1989 law that Perata was seeking to strengthen also was given life by bloodshed. In January of that year, a deranged gunman unleashed 106 rounds from an AK-47 on a Stockton schoolyard, killing five children.

In some of its early drafts, that legislation--written by former Los Angeles lawmakers Sen. David Roberti and Assemblyman Mike Roos--provided a generic description of assault weapons, restricting firearms that fit the bill.

But faced with fierce opposition from gun interests and recalcitrant legislators, the generic description was dropped in favor of restricting 75 specific weapons and providing a process for adding new guns, a provision that has been tied up in the courts. Seeing an opening, gun makers have slightly modified and renamed their weapons to get around the restrictions.

Perata hoped to stitch that loophole by returning to the initial intent of the 1989 law, banning assault weapons based on a general description.

Perata’s bill also called for tough new penalties, including mandatory life sentences for anyone using assault weapons in attacks on police officers--a provision aimed at making it hard for tough-on-crime Republicans to oppose.

The reality is that most lawmakers either are for gun controls or against them, rarely switching sides. As a result, the fates of such bills rest with a handful of moderates in both parties. And they were about to feel the kind of scorching political heat that a battle over gun control inevitably generates.

Firearm Lobbyists Don’t Hold Back

Leading the charge for the National Rifle Assn. in Sacramento was Steve Helsley, the organization’s chief lobbyist since 1993, who operates under this credo: “If [Democrats] think this is the road to leadership, spiffy. It’s real simple. We’re going to pick a few [anti-gun legislators] and go after ‘em.”

Before taking the NRA job, Helsley was a narcotics officer for the state Justice Department and was wounded during a 1970 shootout with a drug dealer in Bakersfield.

Moreover, when the 1989 assault weapons law was drafted, Helsley headed the Justice Department’s law enforcement division and helped then-Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp formulate his position. Helsley’s background and expertise makes him all the more persuasive when he buttonholes lawmakers.

The influence of pro-gun groups such as Helsley’s does not come from campaign cash, at least not recently in this state. By California standards, the three largest pro-gun groups were bit money players in the past two elections, and the amounts they spent dropped by half, from $487,000 in 1994 to $243,000 in 1996.

But they have something more valuable: legions of passionate activists ready to jam fax lines for critical roll call votes and to knock on doors for key election races. A toll-free number gives NRA members reports on the status of gun bills, telling them who to call and what to say.

And they don’t pull punches.

Consider this analogy by Republican consultant Bill Saracino, executive director of Gun Owners of California.

“People in the country shoot a coyote, and they tack the carcass to the barn, and the other coyotes stay away. They sense the death.” So it is, he says, with politicians-- vanquish one and others will steer clear of the issue that caused their colleague’s demise.

“My job is to defeat anti-gun legislators,” Saracino said. “You look for their weak spot and you exploit it. It doesn’t have to be the gun issue. It could be a park issue. If we decide to beat them, it doesn’t matter what the issue is.”

On the other side, the most organized opposition has come from Handgun Control Inc., co-chaired by Sarah Brady. She is the wife of former presidential press secretary James Brady, who was wounded when John W. Hinckley tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981. The group is best known for its high-profile and successful campaign on behalf of the Brady Bill, the 1993 federal law imposing a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases.

Handgun Control places its national membership at 400,000, a fraction of the NRA’s purported 3 million members. Last year, Handgun Control spent $26,000 on lobbying in Sacramento, less than a fourth of the NRA’s $113,000.

As the numerous gun control bills began moving through the Legislature, Handgun Control made no secret of its priority--the junk handgun ban.

“We honestly thought the assault weapons bill would pass without our help,” said Luis Tolley, the group’s Western regional director.

Taking a page from the NRA, the group aired radio ads supporting the handgun ban in the districts of moderate Assembly members and urged activists to call their offices.

In early June, the Assembly approved its version of the handgun bill, thanks in part to the support of three moderate Republicans. The next evening, June 6, Perata’s assault weapons legislation came to a vote.

In the first tally, the bill fell four votes shy of a 41-vote majority. Perata figured he would win over three Democrats who had not voted initially. But he still needed one moderate Republican--Assemblymen Jim Cunneen of San Jose, Brooks Firestone of Los Olivos or Steve T. Kuykendall of Rancho Palos Verdes. Each had split from the GOP leadership by voting for the handgun bill.

As expected, Perata landed the three Democrats. Cunneen also voted for it partly because of the tough new penalties.

The bill next moved to the Senate, where lawmakers generally are more supportive of gun controls but also are concerned about the high cost of an expanded prison population--especially Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara).

Unfortunately for Perata, his bill’s first Senate stop was in a committee chaired by Vasconcellos, a legislator for more than three decades. Before allowing the bill to move forward, he made sure the new penalty provisions were removed.

“We weren’t trying to subvert it,” Vasconcellos said. “But it was beyond what you needed to do the job.”

Perata acquiesced.

“I made the deal I needed to make in order to get it out of the Senate,” Perata said, noting that enhanced penalties already exist for using assault weapons in crimes. “The bill was about getting rid of these weapons, not about putting people who use them in prison for life.”

The full Senate proceeded to approve the bill easily in the last week of the session, setting up a final Assembly vote on the last night of the session, Sept. 12.

The gun lobby scrambled.

“We started working the Assembly the minute it passed the Senate,” said Joel Friedman, head of an NRA chapter in the Pasadena area. All 55 members of the group were mobilized and started calling legislators. The message: Vote for the measure and risk being unseated in the next election.

“I’ve never met a human being who likes to be threatened,” Friedman said.

One target was Republican Firestone, who is running for lieutenant governor. Last year, he received a top rating from the NRA. Pro-gun activists walked door to door to help him win in 1994.

But when he voted for Caldera’s handgun bill, firearm activists turned on him, as they believed he had turned on them.

An NRA chapter in Ventura County denounced Firestone as “pro crime” in a letter signed by 900 people, some of whom had worked on his 1994 campaign and now threatened to walk precincts against him. Gun Owners of California described him as “jellyfish-spined.”

“It hurts, no question,” Firestone said of the prospect of being targeted by gun interests. “I need all the help I can get. I would like it if people of goodwill and balanced judgment got more involved in the political process, so that the far left and far right don’t count for so much. The state would be better off.”

In its last-minute push against the assault weapon legislation, gun lobbyists mobilized hundreds of volunteers, urging each to contact a legislator.

“There was one point when we were getting a phone call every three minutes,” a Firestone aide recalled.

As the showdown neared, the NRA’s Helsley moved into high gear. He visited the offices of moderates, passing out fliers proclaiming that the bill was significantly different from what the Assembly first approved--a contention Perata disputed.

More to the point, Helsley warned lawmakers that if they voted for it, he would declare war, accusing them of supporting a measure that he claimed would make weapons owned by some deer hunters illegal.

When Perata began counting noses, he knew his legislation was slipping away. Among other factors, he had lost the certain backing of a key ally, Caldera, who had accepted a job with the Clinton administration.

Caldera resigned from the Assembly in early September, after casting a final vote for the Senate version of the ban on Saturday night specials. Gov. Pete Wilson would later veto the measure--the one major anti-gun bill to survive votes this year in both houses.

Although Caldera was gone, Democrats still had 42 seats, enough to approve the assault weapons bill on purely partisan lines. But some of the most loyal pro-gun votes are Democrats--Roderick Wright of Los Angeles, Joe Baca of Rialto and Denise Ducheny of San Diego.

Perata also no longer had the support of Republican Cunneen, who had voted for the bill on its first pass through the Assembly. Cunneen said in an interview that when the Senate removed the tough penalties, he no longer could support it. The longer prison sentences, Cunneen said, were “important for me to explain my position.”

Moderate Republican Kuykendall, another swing vote, said he became put off by the politics that surrounded the bill: “I am not in favor of assault weapons, but we’ve already banned them. . . . Perata was being opportunistic to run a bill on that.”

Perata’s quest was wounded further by Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, who by then had voiced opposition to the bill. Lungren argued that the legislation would undermine his efforts to defend the state’s 1989 assault weapons law against a constitutional challenge by gun manufacturers. That argument was all the justification some lawmakers needed to oppose the bill.

One of the measure’s biggest backers was Los Gatos Police Chief Larry Todd, who represents the California Police Chiefs Assn. “It doesn’t take a mental giant to figure out you don’t want that kind of firepower on the streets,” Todd said.

But even Todd was counseling retrenchment. He said he had spent such long hours working for the ban on cheap handguns that he simply ran out of time to hone his strategy for the assault weapons measure. He asked Perata to put off the vote until next year--a recommendation that the assemblyman now saw as his only option.

So on that final night of the Assembly’s marathon session--a night Perata had hoped would represent a legislative triumph for himself and the public--he quietly tucked the measure away.

Make no mistake, however, Perata is not sulking over opportunity lost. In fact, he almost welcomes the defeat because on the electoral horizon, he and his Democratic colleagues see new opportunity.

Next Year, a New Fight

As next year’s state elections approach, expect to hear plenty about handguns and assault weapons.

The assault weapons bill in particular has significant implications for the 1998 governor’s race, especially if U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein seeks the Democratic nomination. Feinstein led efforts to win passage of federal limits on assault weapons in 1994, and now is trying to crack down even more on their proliferation.

If she becomes the nominee, she probably will face Lungren, who has been criticized for failing to use his powers under the current law to stem the flow of so-called copycat assault weapons onto the streets of California.

“The politics are better for us next year all the way around,” said Perata, who plans to push the legislation again in the 1998 session, just as backers of the junk handgun plan to revive their measure. “In that 15 seconds when some voter is paying attention, you can say this is one of the dramatic differences [between the parties].”

Republican leaders, meanwhile, welcome such a confrontation. They believe that as Democrats push their anti-gun agenda, weapon owners will become energized, and the GOP counts on them to do vital campaign work, such as getting voters to the polls on election day. The NRA and other gun groups also see a chance to bolster their ranks.

“Second Amendment activists tend to be very committed and they put in a lot of time [in elections], more than people committed to other causes,” said state GOP Chairman Michael Schroeder.

Of course, pro-gun votes don’t come just from Republicans, a point made in the Gun Owners of California’s latest newsletter. Along with flattering articles on Democrats Ducheny, Baca and Wright was a separate story slamming Republicans who had strayed.

“We are willing to defeat anti-gun Republicans,” said the organization’s executive director, “even if that means denying them a majority, and if we have to prove it, we will.”

Perata, based on rattling personal experience, knows these are not empty vows.

Last summer, in its newsletter, Gun Owners of California demonstrated its no-holds-barred philosophy by dredging up an 8-year-old story accusing Perata of hypocrisy for having a concealed weapons permit while proposing gun control legislation.

This time, given the controversy surrounding his bill, the newsletter piece circulated far and wide, from a suburban paper in Perata’s district to the San Francisco Chronicle to Paul Harvey’s radio commentary and, of course, to television news shows.

Perata said, as he had years before, that he obtained the permit because of repeated threats to his life, including a bullet sent in an unmarked envelope. But the damage was done.

Says Perata of the affair: “It has given me a little more respect for my colleagues who are deathly afraid of the [gun lobby].”