Weekend Gun Shows Drawing More Scrutiny

Four times a year, the Los Angeles County fairgrounds in Pomona becomes a supermarket of firearms, ammunition, antique weapons, body armor and survivalist gear.

And if undercover operations undertaken by state and federal agents in recent months are any indication, the Great Western Gun Show also is a place to buy illegal machine guns and assault weapons.

Tuesday’s coldblooded rampage that left a postal worker dead on a Chatsworth street and four youths and one adult wounded at the North Valley Jewish Community Center has renewed an intense debate about gun control and the availability of high-powered, rapid-fire weapons.

The latest in this spring and summer’s siege of shootings across the country has served to focus attention on the weekend gun shows that are held in communities large and small.

In many cases, these weapons expos take place on public property at fairgrounds or convention centers.

Indeed, a behind the scenes fight is underway about whether the nation’s largest gun show will continue to be held at the county fairgrounds in Pomona.

Alarmed by recent arrests for illegal sales at the gun show, the Board of Supervisors has demanded that Fairplex, the organization that runs the fairgrounds for the county, tighten oversight of the event.

Concerned that the county may eventually want to ban the event entirely, Fairplex officials late last week sought compensation--as much as $600,000 a year--to replace lost income. Unless the county agrees to those terms, Fairplex officials threatened to sign a contract allowing the gun show to use the fairgrounds for next year’s events.

The fight over regulation of gun shows also will be waged today and Tuesday in Sacramento. Legislation to crack down on gun shows faces key legislative committee tests in the state Senate. In addition, a renewed effort is expected in Congress to toughen gun laws, including regulation of gun shows.

Adding more fuel to these debates were recent arrests for weapons illegally sold at gun shows.

Officials of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said Friday that Southern California “gun shows have repeatedly been the sites of illegal firearm transactions, including weapons recovered in connection with the infamous North Hollywood shootout.”

One-Stop Shop for Weapons

The biggest of all these shows is the Great Western Gun Show at Fairplex in Pomona, where thousands of tables and cases display guns, bullets, clothing, historical memorabilia, tactical manuals and leaflets. It is a one-stop shop for weapons of all descriptions, from Civil War rifles to the latest semiautomatic pistols. There is enough for sale to outfit an army.

In fact, state undercover officers went on a buying trip at the Pomona show in May and quickly exhausted their $4,000 budget for gun purchases. In a matter of hours, they bought illegal assault rifles and machine gun conversion kits, said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer. Four people were later arrested. Charges are still pending against three of them.

And last week, James Michael Swain of Newport Beach was arrested for allegedly selling machine guns to ATF agents. Richard A. Curd, director of the Los Angeles Division of the ATF, said undercover agents began “the investigation in response to illegal activities at the Great Western Gun Show” held in July.

After the initial contact at a vendor’s table during the show, Swain allegedly agreed to provide a quantity of illegal machine guns, Curd said. He ultimately sold six machine guns to officers, who then negotiated to buy more weapons, Curd said. Swain was arrested Tuesday as he attempted to deliver 10 Sten machine guns. After searching his Orange County home, agents recovered more machine guns, machine gun kits and silencers.

The arrest of Swain, who has pleaded not guilty, came on the same day that Buford O. Furrow Jr. allegedly sprayed the Jewish center with gunfire, wounding three children, a camp counselor and a receptionist, and later killed letter carrier Joseph Ileto.

The Jewish Center shooting and the latest arrest in connection with weapons purchased in Pomona has heightened demands by county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky that Fairplex sever its contract with Great Western Shows Inc. of Irvine.

In May, the Board of Supervisors ordered that security be tightened at the gun shows and called for tracking of vendors and the weapons they sell. But the board stopped short of forbidding Fairplex from allowing the shows to use the county facility. Two more shows are planned this year before the current contract between Fairplex and Great Western expires.

“The gun shows at Pomona and everywhere else in this country are shopping malls for the purchase of illegal weaponry,” Yaroslavsky said. “I do not believe we should be using a county facility to sell arms. We are unwitting partners in the easy access that the public has to automatic and semiautomatic weapons.” Yaroslavsky said “the public would string me up” if he proposed having gun shows at the Hollywood Bowl.

Yaroslavsky, with the backing of Sheriff Lee Baca, is pressing his demand to ban the gun show from Fairplex.

Breaking the umbilical cord between Fairplex and the gun show will be difficult. The county does not have the right to force Fairplex to end the shows.

The rental fees, parking and concession revenues are a financial lifeblood for Fairplex, which operates the fairgrounds on a long-term lease with the county. The Great Western gun show is big business, drawing upward of 40,000 people on a busy weekend to view more than 5,000 tables of merchandise.

More than $600,000, or 30% of the facility’s net income last year, came from playing host to the gun shows.

Fairplex President James E. Henwood, who is president of the Los Angeles County Fair Assn., which runs the Fairplex, sent a strongly worded letter Thursday to County Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen demanding immediate action to offset any loss of income if the gun shows are banned.

Fairplex officials have “attempted to be responsive to the county’s concerns, [but] the association cannot sacrifice its economic viability in the process,” Henwood wrote. “If the Board of Supervisors truly believes that the sale of modern firearms at Fairplex must cease, then the economic consequences of that decision to the association must be addressed.”

Compensation Demand

Henwood demanded that the county provide a $600,000 a year rent credit to Fairplex, adjusted annually for inflation, to offset the loss of income from the gun shows.

“If there is to be an accord between the county and the association as to the sale of modern firearms at Fairplex, that accord must be reached and documented within the next several days,” he said. “The association is receiving severe pressure with respect to modern firearm show contracts for the year 2000. The time to execute contracts for 2000 is upon us.”

The bottom line is simple, according to Henwood. “While the association is anxious to reach an accommodation with the county, if that accommodation cannot be reached quickly, the association will necessarily protect its revenue base for 2000 by contracting with the [gun show] promoter.”

The show’s manager, Chad Seger, said the promoter wants to sign a contract for next year’s shows soon. If Fairplex refuses to allow the sale of modern firearms, he said, the Great Western show will go elsewhere. “We’d just move.”

He said Yaroslavsky’s effort is “an attempt to end gun shows. We just happen to be the biggest, so we’re the showcase sacrificial lamb.”

Since the undercover operation conducted by agents from the state Department of Justice in May, Seger said the show has worked closely with law enforcement agencies to beef up security.

He said the sale of illegal weapons, which agents say was arranged at the show, “wasn’t the fault of the venue or the actual event, it was the fault of a couple bad apples.”

Fairplex spokesman Sid Robinson said the facility has been working with the county to “crack down on illegal transactions, to increase law enforcement activity, to indeed make it a better show. We want an event that is run squeaky-clean.”

But Sheriff Baca, appearing at a news conference Friday surrounded by some of the machine guns Swain allegedly delivered after the July gun show, expressed concern that “there is some kind of culture here that can attract thousands and thousands of weapons and hate literature.”

He pointed out that some of the high-powered weapons possessed by suspects in the North Hollywood bank shootout were traced back to a Great Western Gun Show. “The two men involved . . . had known how to purchase ordinance through gun shows,” Baca said.

At the state Capitol today, the Senate Appropriations Committee will consider a bill to establish a new firearms enforcement unit within the state Department of Justice. On Tuesday, the Senate Public Safety Committee will consider several bills to significantly tighten controls over the sale or transfer of firearms at gun shows.

Yaroslavsky said stricter controls are badly needed.

“Gun shows are America’s dirty little secret,” he said.