City Approves Curbs on Sale of Handguns

With strong backing from police, the City Council voted Wednesday to make Los Angeles the first city in California to prohibit the sale of more than one handgun per month to anyone.

The ordinance signed into law Wednesday is aimed at “straw purchasers,” people who buy large numbers of firearms and then sell them to criminals, minors and others not legally allowed to own a gun.

Los Angeles Police Department officials supported the measure, saying such handguns account for about 2,000 of the 7,000 weapons used in crimes and seized annually by the LAPD.

“We strongly support this ordinance,” Capt. Bill Fierro told the council. “We do have an illegal weapons and trafficking problem in this city, and we feel this ordinance definitely impacts the problems we have.”

The measure, which bans the purchase or sale of more than one handgun per month to an individual, was written by City Councilman Mike Feuer.

Feuer told council members the ordinance is a common-sense step to reduce gun violence that claimed 1,200 lives in Los Angeles County in 1997. One-sixth of those killed were children, Feuer said.

“Gun violence continues to pose both a public safety emergency and a public health emergency here in metropolitan Los Angeles,” Feuer told his colleagues before they voted unanimously to approve the ordinance.

More than a dozen residents, including two women who lost sons to gun violence, attended the council meeting to lend support.

Mary Leigh Blek, whose 21-year-old son Matthew was shot to death in 1994, criticized the gun lobby.

“I challenge any one of them to dare complain that this might inconvenience some legitimate gun owner,” Blek said. “Just ask any parent who has forever lost a child to gun violence how inconvenient it is to bury a dead child.”

No one testified against the ordinance, but Sam Peredes of the group Gun Owners of California said later in an interview that the measure is unnecessary because laws already prohibit the sale of guns to felons and minors. Those laws, he said, are not enforced.

“It is so ludicrous to think that limiting the number of guns someone can purchase is going to solve the [violence] problem,” Peredes said.

He said gun ownership is increasing in the United States while crime is declining.

Councilmen Rudy Svorinich Jr. and Hal Bernson said they strongly believe in the constitutional right to bear firearms, but said the Los Angeles ordinance is not unreasonable because it still allows law-abiding citizens to buy one gun a month or 12 guns a year for protection.

“For those who feel that they need more than one handgun a month, I take exception to that,” Svorinich said. “A dozen handguns in one’s possession does not make anyone safer.”

Louis Tolley, western regional director of Handgun Control Inc., said the ordinance adopted Wednesday addresses the complaints of the gun lobby about most legislation.

“The opponents of gun laws often say they won’t work because criminals will always be able to get guns on the street,” Tolley said. “This ordinance directly impacts how criminals get guns on the street and it works.”

Similar laws have been enacted in Virginia, Maryland and South Carolina, but Feuer said no other city in California has adopted such an ordinance.

The number of straw-purchased guns from Virginia used in crimes in neighboring states declined by 70% after that state adopted its law, Tolley said.

Tolley and other advocates of tougher laws praised the council for leading the way in California with legislation.

The ordinance adopted Wednesday is one of several weapons-related laws adopted by the council in recent years, including a ban on assault weapons adopted in 1989.

The council adopted ordinances in 1997 banning the sale of large-capacity ammunition clips, requiring thumbprints and registration from anyone buying ammunition, and requiring that trigger locks be sold with every gun.

The year before the council was one of the first bodies in the state to ban the sale of so-called Saturday night specials--poorly made handguns with a history of malfunctioning after repeated use.

“We are very pleased with the leadership Los Angeles has taken on many gun regulations,” said Ann Reiss Lane, chairwoman of the group Women Against Gun Violence and a former Los Angeles police commissioner. “We think this is an important addition to those ordinances.”

Feuer, noting the ordinance is not effective outside the city, called for passage of legislation proposed by Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles) to make a similar ban statewide. Knox proposed the same bill last year but it failed to escape committee.

Knox said Wednesday that approval of the ordinance in Los Angeles will help him to persuade the Legislature to adopt a similar measure statewide.

“The Los Angeles city ordinance gives the state bill enormous momentum,” Knox said.

The effective date of the ordinance will be delayed 90 days to allow the state Department of Justice to upgrade its computer database on gun purchases so gun-shop owners can determine whether a purchaser has bought a handgun anywhere in the state during the previous 30 days.