Two Dealers Halt Sale of Hunting Rifles

Fearful that they could be accused of selling outlawed assault weapons, two major California gun dealers said Wednesday they have indefinitely suspended the sale of many popular hunting rifles.

Executives of Turner’s Outdoorsman, a big retail sporting goods chain in Southern California, and Trader Sports Inc. of San Leandro, a Northern California firearms retailer, said hundreds of rifles had been removed from sales shelves on Jan. 1.

In interviews, they charged that recent administrative regulations by Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer to implement California’s new assault weapons control law were so narrowly drawn that they would ban the sale and possession of many legal guns used for hunting deer, bear and wild pigs.

Rather than risk potential arrest or other legal liability, spokesmen for the two dealers said the businesses decided to indefinitely suspend the sale of such popular hunting guns as the Remington 7400 and the Ruger Mini-14.

“We definitely want to comply with the law. However, we are really unsure what we can do without putting ourselves or our customers in jeopardy,” said Bill Ortiz, an executive of Turner’s, which operates 13 stores in Southern California.

“If you follow their description, there aren’t any guns that are legal,” said Tony Cucchiara of Trader Sports. “We’ve pulled about 300 pieces that I thought were marginal pending a clearer view from the attorney general.”

Nathan Barankan, a spokesman for Lockyer, defended the regulations, asserting that they accurately reflected the Legislature’s intent in enacting the law.

“For those who opposed the first assault weapons ban back in 1989, their failed argument has always been that assault weapons are sporting weapons. Unless your sport is war, there is no justification for that point of view,” Barankan said.

While the 1999 Legislature substantially toughened controls on assault weapons, it was left to Lockyer’s Department of Justice to propose and adopt administrative regulations that implement the statute.

In essence, the regulations are intended to help police officers, gun dealers and citizens identify the differences between a banned assault gun and a legal firearm.

During debate last year on the new assault weapons restrictions, backers of the bill, SB 23 by Sen. Don Perata (D-Alameda), said they went to extraordinary lengths to avoid including hunting rifles in the prohibition.

“We figured we knew what the legislative intention was, but this has thrown a wrench into the works,” Ortiz said. “We have spent a lot of time trying to avoid this jeopardy and legal peril.”

Throughout the long debate over assault weapons, the National Rifle Assn. and other opponents of new controls contended that it was impossible to craft an effective definition of an assault gun that would exclude guns used for hunting or other sporting purposes.

“The way they wrote the regulations banned everything. This isn’t what they intended to do, but that’s what they wrote down in the regulations,” said NRA lobbyist Steve Helsley of Lockyer’s regulation drafters. “This is clearly Larry and Moe doing gun control.”

The state Department of Justice on Dec. 29 issued its proposed regulations, which, Barankan said, are subject to change after public hearings next month.

Under California’s new assault weapons law, which took effect on Saturday, a variety of semiautomatic firearms are banned in California, if they include such generic military features as a “conspicuously protruding pistol grip,” flash suppressor, folding stock or are easily concealed.

The Legislature left it to Lockyer to define a “conspicuously protruding” pistol grip, often a signature feature of assault guns that allows the shooter to hold the weapon in one hand at the hip and spray fire rapidly.

But Helsley and dealers complained that definitions proposed by the department were so tightly drawn that they classified many center-fire, semiautomatic hunting rifles with a detachable ammunition magazine as an outlawed assault weapon.

In a letter to Lockyer, Shirley Andrews, president of Turner’s, said the regulations left her with two “bad choices.”

“We can sell the rifles that we think should not be covered by any reasonable definition and thereby risk arrest and the loss of our business,” she said. “Or we can sell no semiautomatic rifles at all and go out of business.”

She appealed to Lockyer for advice in complying with the “vexing” regulations. Ortiz, her spokesman, said Wednesday that no reply had been received.

Ortiz noted that the bill was signed by Gov. Gray Davis last summer but that the Department of Justice announced the regulations only a few days before the law took effect, giving dealers and customers virtually no time to make sales adjustments.

“In effect, they’re saying, ‘We made a law and we don’t know what we are enforcing, but we’ll tell you when you get there,’ ” Ortiz said.