Gun Control Blitz Pleases Early Victim of NRA Clout

At home and out of range in the redwoods of Mendocino County, several hours drive from the political wars of Sacramento, Winfield Shoemaker reacts with satisfaction and bemusement as salvos of gun control bills whiz through the California Legislature.

In the contentious arena of gun control law, Shoemaker was both a pioneer and a victim. “It was the gun business that ended my political life,” said Shoemaker, now 69 and a retired schoolteacher and newspaper publisher living in Fort Bragg.

Before its current session ends next month, the Legislature is expected to have passed at least four gun control bills. They include the so-called Saturday night special ban that won final approval Monday in the state Senate, as well as bills prohibiting assault weapons, limiting handgun buyers to one purchase a month and requiring child safety locks on most new weapons sold.

In terms of gun control, this will be Sacramento’s most productive session since 1989, when California’s first big assault weapons ban, the first in the nation, was passed.

One of two concurrent bills requiring gun dealers to install safety locks, sponsored by Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), sailed through the Assembly by a 52-16 vote Monday and now heads back to the Senate for final confirmation.

Democratic Gov. Gray Davis is expected to sign all the major gun control bills that come before him this year--not veto them as his Republican predecessor did on most occasions.

Support for Gun Control

In this era of mass shootings such as those in the Littleton, Colo., high school and the Atlanta day trading houses, legislators find it relatively painless and even politically advantageous to propose gun reform laws. Dozens of such bills have appeared in this session--lawmakers finally are catching up with a public that, according to most polls, overwhelmingly favors gun control.

Stephen C. Helsley, a former California Department of Justice official who is the National Rifle Assn. lobbyist here, dismisses this session’s bills as incremental legislation not important enough to arouse the gun-owning public.

The true test of public opposition to gun control, Helsley said, will come when someone tackles the issues of gun registration and licensing of gun owners.

“The success that some politicians have up here is to demonize certain classes of guns that people who own guns don’t think they have, like the so-called Saturday night specials,” said Helsley. “The real test will come when someone offers a bill that makes it clear that this affects everyone. There are more guns in this state than cars. That will be the true crossing of the Rubicon.”

There was a time not long ago when supporting just mild gun control legislation was the political kiss of death in California. Young legislators who harbored visions of limiting the supply of guns on the state’s mean streets were warned by their more experienced colleagues to back off and seek cover.

“Don’t pull a Win Shoemaker!” they were told. Shoemaker, an amateur horticulturist who said he has not returned to the state capital since 1970, became synonymous with quixotic legislation that results in electoral humiliation.

Shoemaker’s historic gunfight came in 1968, in the weeks after Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. Encouraged by powerful Speaker Jess Unruh, Shoemaker, a promising liberal Democratic Assemblyman from Santa Barbara, offered the state’s first comprehensive gun control bill.

After stirring testimony before packed Capitol galleries, the bill was eventually killed in committee.

Shoemaker, who then owned a handgun and eight other guns--all of which he has since disposed of--was targeted in the 1968 fall elections by the NRA and other pro-gun groups and was defeated badly in his bid for a third term. For years after that, each time a key gun bill was proposed, its authors were frequently run out of office by pro-gun forces in the next election.

Many political analysts attribute former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s 1982 defeat in his race for governor to the existence of a gun control initiative--Proposition 15, calling for a halt in the sale of handguns in California--on the same ballot. The NRA and its supporters pumped huge sums of money and political manpower into rural and suburban areas, leading to Bradley’s narrow defeat by Republican George Deukmejian.

It was Deukmejian, a foe of new controls on guns, who signed the original assault gun bill in 1989--a move that stunned both sides of the fight.

That year, public opinion was jolted when a mentally twisted drifter sprayed a Stockton schoolyard with an AK-47 assault rifle, killing five children and wounding 29 others and a teacher before killing himself.

“What that Stockton thing did,” said Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco), “was that it got the pro-gun control forces out with an almost equal amount of fervor as the NRA forces had. It meant that you could take on the NRA without facing political ruin.”

Efforts at Influence Fail

In the 1990 elections, the NRA took aim at lawmakers who supported the assault weapons ban, pumping more than $100,000 into legislative elections from its Golden Bear and NRA Political Victory political action committees. But this time, the effort failed. Virtually all of the targeted legislators won reelection.

Today, the political price for gun control seems to have diminished for the majority of lawmakers. “The NRA used to be able to scare legislators from voting against almost any gun control bill,” said Luis Tolley, western director of Handgun Control, the national organization founded by Jim and Sarah Brady after Brady and President Ronald Reagan were wounded in a 1982 assassination attempt. “But with voters now demanding strong laws to stop gun violence, the old NRA threats don’t work very well any more. Very few politicians in California today want to be associated too closely to the NRA.”

In his modest home, where the walls bear few signs of his once-promising political career, Shoemaker draws some satisfaction from knowing that most of the reforms he proposed in his 1968 bill are now law. “Most guns can be fairly easily traced now,” he said in a telephone interview.

“I’m gratified to see that the public is more actively concerned about gun control legislation than it was during my time, and that the activity of the NRA has been shown up for what it is,” Shoemaker said.

Times staff writer Carl Ingram contributed to this story.

* COUNTY GUN BAN

Supervisors appear poised to approve a ban today on gun sales on county property. B1

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Gun Control Bills

Highlights of major gun control bills pending in the Legislature or signed by Gov. Gray Davis:

HANDGUNS--SB 15 would make it illegal to manufacture, import or sell “unsafe” handguns commonly called Saturday night specials. Would establish tests of accidental firing and require most semiautomatic pistols to have a manually operated safety. The state Department of Justice would maintain and publish an updated list of prohibited guns. Bill by Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles). Won final approval Monday in Senate.

ASSAULT WEAPONS--SB 23 strengthens restrictions on semiautomatic firearms containing combat features, including protruding pistol grips, flash suppressors, the ability to accept large-capacity ammunition magazines and folding stocks. Makes it illegal to make, import, sell, give or lend any magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds. Bill by Sen. Don Perata (D-Alameda). Signed by Davis.

PURCHASE LIMITS--AB 202 restricts handgun purchasers to one pistol or revolver a month, from a licensed dealer. Similar to a Los Angeles ordinance. Bill by Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles). Signed by Davis.

SAFETY--AB 106 and SB 130 would require the state attorney general to test trigger locks, barrel cables, lock boxes and other devices intended to prevent accidental discharges and approve those that are effective. Guns could not be sold unless equipped with an approved device. Restrictions would take effect Jan. 1, 2002. The two bills, by Assemblyman Jack Scott (D-Altadena) and Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), await final passage.