Coalition Taking Aim at Gun Violence, NRA

It seems ironic that the National Rifle Assn. opened its national meeting Friday in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. An even more bizarre juxtaposition is that the giant gun lobby’s annual event opened on the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

That was reason enough for me to head to Newport Beach for a little fresh air, listening to Billie Weiss. Weiss, who also noted the NRA’s ill timing, is executive director of the Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los Angeles. She was here to receive an award from--and speak to--the Violence Prevention Coalition of Orange County.

Weiss has a right to be proud of the Orange County neighbors who honored her. When that group created its program two years ago, it modeled it after Weiss’.

Weiss is an epidemiologist who works for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Services. Her research eight years ago showed her that violence was starting to pass other leading causes of death. Violence, she was convinced, needed to be treated as a public health issue.

With help from a small grant, she and some friends created their coalition. They wanted to generate more public awareness that violence has to be treated, much the same way you treat a communicable disease.

“When you fight malaria, you don’t go after the parasite, you go after the mosquito,” she said. “So we knew the only way to be effective was to go after the guns.”

Her coalition has had some successes. It got the Legislature to pass a ban on all cheap handguns (Saturday night specials) in California. Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed it, but the bill should be back for the next governor. Last year, her group successfully lobbied Los Angeles County supervisors to cut back the number of “kitchen table” gun dealers who don’t work out of storefronts. They adopted Weiss’s recommendation that such gun dealers not be allowed to operate in residential areas. It has cut almost in half the number of people licensed to sell guns in that county.

The Los Angeles coalition has also worked hard to convince school board members in Bellflower to reject a proposal that it approve a marksmanship class for students. The proposal passed 3 to 2, but since the Oregon school shooting incident last month, that proposal has been tabled.

The Violence Prevention Coalition of Orange County has also been lobbying in the Bellflower case, an example of the two violence prevention groups helping each other.

“We have to treat it as an issue bigger than Orange County,” said Sister Mary Gaellic of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Orange, who is active in the local coalition.

My guess is that eventually all the violence prevention coalitions in the state will band together to form a lobby that will become a formidable nemesis for the National Rifle Assn.

But for these coalitions to become effective, organizers say, the public has to stop treating violence as the norm. That’s one of the written mission goals of the Orange County coalition.

It was founded in the spring of 1996 by two public employees. Daria Waetjen is the violence prevention coordinator for the Orange County Department of Education. Davine Abbott works on the alcohol and drug education prevention team for the Orange County Health Care Agency.

“We would go to meetings on child abuse or domestic violence, and we’d see the same faces over and over,” Abbott said. “We thought a coalition might give us a chance to pool our resources and better share what we were doing.”

The 60-member coalition is now made up of agencies as varied as the Tustin Unified School District, the Westminster Police Department, UC Irvine, the county Probation Department, the Anti-Defamation League, plus the county Department of Education and the county Health Care Agency.

It works through committees that deal with policy statements, public awareness and providing resources. Sister Gaellic’s committee is putting together a resource handbook for officials such as police officers and judges, listing contacts for various violence issues, such as gangs or alcohol-related violence.

“Reducing violence isn’t something we can do overnight,” said Sister Gaellic. “But most of us are in this for the long haul.”

One way the coalition hopes to make an impact is to recognize those already working to reduce violence. So the coalition Friday gave out its second annual Ambassador of Peace awards.

Winners besides Weiss included Municipal Judge Luis A. Rodriguez, who helped found the Peer Court Juvenile alternative sentencing program. Twelve Orange County schools now participate. Students who have admitted guilt to non-felony crimes, such as marijuana use, appear before a jury of fellow students, who recommend the defendant’s level of punishment. It’s “the best-kept secret in Orange County,” Rodriguez said with pride. “We give the kids an opportunity to make principled decisions.”

The idea is that, as participants in the system, they might be less likely to be abusers of that system later.

Another winner was Erin Gruwell of Newport Beach, who teaches English at Long Beach’s Woodrow Wilson High School. She and her students were featured earlier this year on ABC-TV’s “Prime Time” for the book they created on the woes of growing up with urban difficulties and the need for tolerance. Gruwell told the luncheon crowd at Newport Beach that too many of her students were growing up without heroes.

Helping the next generation, Weiss added, is the only way to ever change the climate that violence has to be tolerated.

She’s optimistic. On Friday’s anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s assassination, at the hands of someone with access to a cheap handguns, Weiss got a surprise call.

“The Los Angeles Police Department offered my coalition a grant. That’s a first, and it was a complete surprise. But that tells me that we’re winning. It may take 30 or 40 years, but I’m convinced we’re going to turn this around.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com