A Mingling of Voices

Something’s happening out there. Something good, something important, something powerful. What had been a timid whisper of protest is rising to a mighty crescendo. What it’s saying is: “No More Guns.”

From Chicago to New Orleans and from Washington to Los Angeles, government agencies are responding to the will of the people to end the proliferation of firearms in a culture obsessed with them.

Lawsuits and legislation are targeting guns and gun manufacturers in a sweeping effort to demand atonement for the pain caused by the simple squeeze of a trigger.

What this amounts to is that the final, whispered breath of gun victims and the anguished cries of survivors are at last being heard from one end of the country to the other.

Chicago and New Orleans have already filed suit against the gun makers, utilizing the kinds of product liability laws that have brought the tobacco industry to its knees. L.A., Miami and San Francisco are expected to follow.

Private suits are also being pursued, notably in Brooklyn, where gun sellers are accused of flooding the market with weapons that ultimately fall into the hands of juveniles and felons.

And on Saturday, Bill Clinton added his voice to the growing thunder, demanding legislation regulating cash and carry sales at gun shows.

Can there be any doubt that the time has come for the merchants of death to answer to the cry of the people?

*

In L.A., City Councilman Mike Feuer put it succinctly: “This is the moment in history to end gun violence.”

He was talking about that mingling of voices rising to create a climate of action aimed at the gun industry. He was talking about the forces that gather like a distant storm to alter social conditions.

“Public policy is about momentum,” Feuer said the other day in his City Hall office. “We must seize this moment to create that momentum.”

He’s the author of an ordinance, signed into law last week, that prohibits the sale of more than one handgun a month to any one person. The law is aimed at halting the trafficking of illegal weapons. Virginia, Maryland and South Carolina have adopted similar measures.

Almost simultaneously, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors banned the sale of so-called junk guns in unincorporated areas and took steps to join Chicago and New Orleans in suing the handgun industry.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who introduced the junk gun measure, echoed Feuer’s thoughts: “The time has come for the nation’s largest county to set an example.”

Feuer has written other anti-gun legislation and hopes that eventually even the National Rifle Assn. will begin to see the value of gun control. “Maybe someday we’ll come together on middle ground,” he said. “The NRA says it’s not the gun, it’s the person who does the shooting. There’s a great consensus out there that says it’s both.”

*

For years, organizations large and small have called for controls on the weapons that kill thousands of Americans each year. We’ve got the highest rate of gun deaths in the industrialized world, but still proclaim a solemn “right” to own and distribute guns like so much cotton candy.

Anyone with any sense has got to realize at some point that the advocacy of gun ownership has nothing to do with rights but with fattening the profits of those who deal in firearms. In the end, their greed would sell the 2nd Amendment to the highest bidder if it would benefit the bottom line.

In actuality, Feuer said, no one is demanding that everyone turn in his weapon. “We’re just trying to enact common-sense rules that will protect everyone, including gun owners and children, and that will keep guns out of the hands of felons.”

His is a moderate voice compared to the passion that fires emotions in other areas. But in private, the voice chokes as he talks about kids in the paths of bullets and the price they pay for their innocence. The price is high. Of 1,200 gun deaths in L.A. County in 1997, 200 were children.

I agree with Feuer and Yaroslavsky that the time has come to lead, to act, to demand, to roar. I agree further that no doors ought to be kicked in nor any weapons confiscated from gun owners who obey the law.

But I also hope that the voices rising in protest to gun deaths will create a future in which the possession of firearms will no longer be necessary. Add my voice to that.

Al Martinez’s column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com