Sale of Guns, Ammo Barred on County Land

Over the vocal objections of some gun owners, a divided Board of Supervisors on Tuesday banned the sale of guns and ammunition on all Los Angeles County property, a move aimed at driving the nation’s largest gun show from the county fairgrounds.

The 3-2 vote came two weeks to the day after a white supremacist allegedly fired a semiautomatic weapon into the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, wounding three children, a teenage camp counselor and a receptionist. The man, Buford O. Furrow Jr., reportedly told authorities that he later shot and killed a postal worker in Chatsworth.

The shootings, the latest in a spring and summer of deadly rampages across the country, sparked demands for tougher gun control laws and tighter regulation of popular weekend gun shows.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky pressed for passage of the county ordinance, which bans the sale of guns and ammunition on all county property, including buildings, beaches, parks and the fairgrounds in Pomona.

“The biggest gun show in the United States is held right here in this county on land owned by the taxpayers of this county,” he said.

Yaroslavsky said some of the illegal automatic weapons possessed by the two gunmen who engaged in a fierce firefight with police outside a Bank of America branch in North Hollywood two years ago were traced back to the Pomona show.

“Enough is enough,” the supervisor said. “The time has come to put an end to this.”

Karl Amelang, president of Great Western Shows, which operates four gun shows a year at the fairgrounds, sharply criticized Yaroslavsky’s approach.

Amelang told the board that the shows and their 2,000 exhibitors “will be severely damaged by this demagoguery.”

He vowed to file suit to challenge the ordinance, which is expected to take effect before the next Pomona gun show, scheduled for October.

“Instead of addressing the underlying causes for the unfortunate assaults by twisted minds on innocent victims,” Amelang said, “this motion is a thinly veiled attempt to destroy the constitutional rights of a legal entity.”

County Counsel Lloyd W. Pellman sought to assure the supervisors that the ordinance could withstand a court challenge, because it prohibits the sale of guns and ammunition but allows the display of antique weapons at gun shows.

Sheriff Lee Baca called on the supervisors to enact the ban. A former Marine and onetime member of the National Rifle Assn., Baca said assault weapons and junk guns have passed through the hands of people at the Pomona gun shows.

“There is unfortunately in this country a gun industry that operates in a vacuum, that hides behind the 2nd Amendment,” the sheriff said.

Baca testified while flanked by the head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ local office and a representative of the state attorney general.

Baca pointedly related how machine guns parts were sold to undercover officers at the July show by a vendor who later delivered illegal British Sten Mark II machine guns and Browning automatic rifles.

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles on Tuesday indicted James Michael Swain of Newport Beach on nine charges stemming from that incident.

State agents working undercover at the May gun show in Pomona also made arrests for alleged violations of gun laws.

Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Gloria Molina joined Yaroslavsky in supporting the ban. Supervisor Mike Antonovich opposed the measure, saying it would penalize gun show patrons who abide by the law. Supervisor Don Knabe joined in opposition, saying he was concerned that the prohibition would force gun sales underground.

The ban proposal drew gun control advocates and gun owners alike to the supervisors’ meeting, at which the owners demanded that their constitutional right to keep and bear arms be protected. The board’s vote was greeted with boos from some of them and chants of “Shame on you.”

Speakers on the other side of the issue described the personal toll gun violence has taken on their lives, though none said the weapons used were tied to gun shows.

“Gun shows are the breeding grounds for the birth of violence in our society,” said Sister Una Connolly, who works with gang members in the San Fernando Valley. She said the youths boast that they can easily obtain high-powered weaponry.

County health officials, including surgeons who treat gunshot wounds, rattled off statistics demonstrating the toll of firearms violence: 1,300 gun deaths in Los Angeles County in 1997, with 2,651 additional hospitalizations; $380,000 to treat each victim of gun violence, mostly in taxpayer money.

Jeff Rouss, director of the Jewish Community Centers of Los Angeles, commended supervisors for the ban. He said that children at the Granada Hills center still cower when they hear police helicopters overhead and that one 6-year-old girl who skinned her knee believed “the monster” had returned and shot her.

“I am speaking for the children,” Rouss said. “You have to lead; you have to protect them.”

Fernando Del Rio of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference recalled how his 20-year-old daughter was killed by a stray bullet that ripped into her car and tore through her abdomen.

“The proliferation of guns in our society is something that must be curtailed,” he said.

Sally Weber, a social worker, recalled how her husband was fatally shot during a robbery at an automated teller machine 10 years ago in West Los Angeles.

“I believe we have rights as powerful as the gun lobby,” she said. “The right to stand up for public safety.”

Recalling how her father had hoped to attend her high school graduation, Adina Weber added: “Please don’t let any more guns ruin people’s lives. It ruined mine.”

As the Webers left the speakers area in the supervisors chamber, a gun show supporter leaned out and said to Sally Weber: “Your husband should have had a gun.”

She stiffened and shot back: “Then I would have been killed.” She was sitting next to her husband in their car when he was shot.

Speaking against the ban, Mike Robbins, a former El Segundo councilman, said the supervisors were denying citizens the right to self-defense.

“The presence of firearms . . . reduces our overall crime rate,” he said, criticizing “soft-on-crime liberals pushing gun control.”

Arms instructor Barry Krugel told the supervisors: “We have a right to our weapons. We have a right to buy and sell weapons.” Urging the supervisors not to adopt the ban, he added: “We wish to exercise our rights of free speech and free enterprise.”

Mark W. Garcia, a vendor at the Pomona gun show, said there is a very good chance that he will have to close down and lay off employees if the show is canceled. “We have families. We pay taxes. You are hurting us,” he said.

The ban “is a disgrace to our Constitution,” said the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny.

While the supervisors were grappling with the ban, Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks told the city Police Commission on Tuesday that he is looking for a federal lawmaker to sponsor legislation that would give gun owners tax breaks if they turn in weapons. He said such a program would be an easy way to compensate gun owners.

The commission asked Parks to report back next month with further information on his gun buyback proposal and similar programs.

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Times staff writers Nicholas Riccardi and Matt Lait contributed to this story.