County to Sue Gun Firms, Crack Down on Show

The Board of Supervisors cracked down Tuesday on what is billed as the nation’s largest gun show after state agents at the county fairgrounds event earlier this month purchased two illegal assault weapons, five illegal machine gun conversion kits and a rocket launcher.

Hours after approving the regulations, supervisors emerged from closed session and announced that they had decided to sue the gun industry to recover costs related to firearms violence, including those incurred by the county medical system.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said afterward that the county eventually may merge its suit with those of other governments but that it is proceeding alone for now.

In a statement after the vote, Supervisor Gloria Molina, who proposed the lawsuit, said: “The firearms industry must be held accountable for firearms-related violence.”

In the gun show investigation, a state Department of Justice official Tuesday told supervisors that his undercover agents made their arrests after the Great Western show because detaining suspects amid the event’s high-powered weaponry would have been dangerous.

“This thing is such an arsenal of weaponry at our own county fairgrounds that even a bona fide law enforcement agency is concerned about enforcing the law for fear of their safety,” Yaroslavsky said.

State law prohibits the supervisors from banning gun shows outright, so Yaroslavsky and Molina introduced a motion requiring tighter security and tracking of vendors and the weaponry they sell at the show, which drew nearly 50,000 people the first weekend of this month. Another show opens in July.

The supervisors also are pressing the fair association, to which the county leases the fairgrounds, to stop subleasing to gun shows.

Representatives of Irvine-based Great Western Shows said that only 10% of the merchandise at their events is modern firearms. They added that they already take safety precautions and support the new steps.

“This is a nonissue. Public safety is everyone’s concern,” said Chuck Michel, an attorney representing Great Western. “The show will do everything it can do, but we can’t stop crime in public just as the supervisors can’t stop crime in their districts.”

Randy Rossi of the state Department of Justice said his agents at the gun show saw that “for the most part there were a lot of lawful activities that were occurring there. The unlawful activities were the exception.”

But Rossi said his agents had neither time nor money to adequately scout the gun show, running out of cash after buying illegal firearms at just a few of the 5,300 tables in the spacious fairgrounds.

Rossi said agents arrested four people after the show on suspicion of illegally selling the weaponry and are seeking other suspects. He said it was difficult to identify salespeople because they did not all wear identification, a problem that supervisors voted to rectify Tuesday.

Undercover Pomona police officers at the show arrested five people on suspicion of illegal weapons sales.

At the gun show this month, amid a crush of shoppers buying everything from rifles and ammunition to books and year-2000 survival kits, a Times reporter observed one man simply setting up shop outside a Fairplex building. Displaying a hand-lettered sign, the vendor opened his gun case and displayed his wares to passersby.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said county staff have monitored the gun shows. “It’s not hidden illegal activity,” she said. “It’s quite apparent.”

Tuesday’s dual gun actions have long been in the works. Supervisors earlier this year voted to begin researching the gun lawsuit and compiling data on the toll of gun violence on the county’s medical system.

The board had called for county staff to amend the lease with the fair association to require closer inspections of the wares and a security plan to be reviewed by the sheriff, but county staff never followed through. “I think the ball was dropped collectively,” Yaroslavsky said Tuesday.

Michel, the attorney for Great Western, said the company has numerous systems in place to ensure that state and federal laws requiring, among other things, a 10-day waiting period after purchasing firearms are enforced.

But after the high school massacre in Littleton, Colo., last month, each supervisor except conservative Mike Antonovich added various amendments to the lease with the fair association that would tighten security. In the end, the motion was approved unanimously, although Antonovich and Supervisor Don Knabe voted against its predecessor last year.

Knabe and Antonovich both voted against suing the gun industry. In an interview, Knabe cited the millions of dollars that the county may get from a settlement with the tobacco industry and said of his colleagues: “They’re looking at another pot of money.”

Activists at the meeting applauded the supervisors’ steps. “Everyone’s asking where are people getting weapons to commit these crimes,” said LaTanya West, who runs a violence prevention program in Inglewood. “They’re getting them from these gun shows.”

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Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this story.