Election, Gun Control Debate in Forefront as Session Opens

With election-year politics percolating just below the surface, the California Legislature on Monday convened its 2000 session as Democratic lawmakers moved aggressively on measures to register handguns and license owners.

The initial legislative test is likely to occur next week when the Assembly Public Safety Committee brings up a licensing proposal (AB 1607) by Assemblyman Kevin Shelley (D-San Francisco). Shelley said his bill to issue a four-year license to handgun owners and a companion annual handgun registration requirement would be similar to the way motorists are licensed and cars registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Meanwhile, Assemblyman Jack Scott (D-Pasadena) on Monday inserted licensing and registration amendments into an anti-crime bill. In terms of restricting firearms, Scott said, “registration is the next logical step.”

“When you register guns, you then know where they are . . . and licensing simply says that people who have guns should have some idea of how to handle them safely,” he said in an interview after Monday’s hourlong Assembly session. Currently, buyers of firearms are subjected to a background check, but there is no licensing requirement.

Under various proposals, handgun owners would be licensed as a condition of purchasing a pistol or revolver. Generally, they would be tested on safety issues, although at least one proposal envisions a firing proficiency test.

Registration generally means recording the ownership of a pistol or revolver with the state Department of Justice at the time of sale and periodically thereafter.

Scott said he is aware that Gov. Gray Davis has appealed to lawmakers for an election-year moratorium on new curbs on firearms. Scott, who is campaigning for a Los Angeles-area state Senate seat, said he will keep in touch with the governor’s office as the legislation progresses.

But the former Pasadena City College president, who has had seven firearms bills signed into law since he was elected in 1996, said he hoped Davis might reconsider. Other Democrats privately questioned whether opening a new front in the fight to restrict handguns was good politics in an election year.

The leader of the Assembly’s Republicans, Scott Baugh of Huntington Beach, indicated that he agrees with Davis’ request for a moratorium on new gun controls. Licensing and registration are “a misguided attempt to deal with the problem. I support the governor’s position. . . . There are plenty of laws on the books to deal with the gun issue,” Baugh said.

The National Rifle Assn., which opposes expanded gun controls, has estimated that there are between 7 million to 10 million handguns in California.

As lawmakers gathered in Sacramento for the first time since September, the emotional gun issue was not the only subject on their minds. Democrats trumpeted proposals to make health insurance more widely available to underprivileged Californians, and Republicans touted proposals to cut taxes.

The typically festive opening day atmosphere was tinged with sadness as lawmakers eulogized a former colleague who died recently, William Lancaster of Covina, and members’ relatives who had died since the last session. Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar) broke down in tears as he recalled his immigrant mother who died last year (legislators sometimes adjourn, as they did Monday, in the memory of departed loved ones).

In the Senate, President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) reaffirmed his support for licensing of handgun owners as a benefit for public safety, but told reporters that licensing raised genuine concerns, including possible creation of an expanded bureaucracy to handle the task.

“One could raise legitimate questions about how you implement a licensure bill as opposed to a registration bill,” Burton said. For instance, he asked rhetorically whether licensing gun owners would require a new government “Department of Weapons Registration and Licensure.”

On another issue, Burton told reporters that a plan advanced by Senate Republicans to cut in half student fees paid at the University of California and the California State University system contains merit.

But of “equal merit,” he said, would be the beefing up of taxpayer-provided “opportunity grants” to low-income students who are struggling financially to afford a college education.

During the last decade, university student fees were increased 100% to help balance state budgets during the recession years. The Republican plan would cut them from $3,429 a year to $1,715 in the UC system and from $1,428 to $714 at Cal State campuses.