Lockyer Denies Gun Law Covers Hunting Rifles

Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer denied Thursday that his enforcement of California’s newly toughened ban on military-style assault weapons extends to sporting rifles commonly used by hunters.

Lockyer accused critics of the 6-day-old law, including the National Rifle Assn. and two of the state’s biggest firearms dealers, of launching a campaign to confuse the public and undermine the controversial statute.

“We are not going to interfere with [a citizen’s] right to hunt, to target shoot, to protect themselves in their homes. Nobody wants to do that. But we are trying to get military-style weapons out of the market,” he said.

The attorney general lashed out a day after the gun retailers, Turner’s Outdoorsman of Chino and Trader Sports of San Leandro, said they had pulled from their shelves hundreds of popular hunting rifles because they feared they could be prosecuted for selling illegal assault weapons.

The two companies and the National Rifle Assn. said that administrative regulations proposed by Lockyer to implement the new law reached beyond the assault guns the Legislature intended to restrict and may outlaw many popular legal rifles as well.

Rather than risk selling such firearms and subjecting themselves and their customers to possible criminal prosecution, executives of the two businesses said, they suspended sales of rifles they think Lockyer has defined as illegal guns.

As a result, said Bill Ortiz of Turner’s, “We’ve lost business in the past few days and quite a bit of money.”

But Lockyer said in an interview Thursday that he stands behind the regulations and has no plans to rescind them. Before the rules are formally adopted, they will be subjected to public hearings and possible changes in February.

Lockyer, who campaigned last year as a supporter of stronger assault weapons controls, charged that having lost the assault weapons fight in the Legislature, the NRA and the gun dealers are attempting to thwart implementation of the law.

“They’ll try to confuse people and reargue the issue, even though it is settled,” he said, asserting that he expects the new law to be challenged in court.

Lockyer insisted that he did not go beyond what the Legislature intended and that his rules do not apply to “hundreds of forms of rifles” that “hunters are accustomed to using.”

In an attempt to make California safer, the new law banned certain semiautomatic arms that contained such military characteristics as a pistol grip, flash suppressor and folding stock.

But NRA lobbyist Stephen Helsley charged that Lockyer’s implementation regulations were written so tightly that they also prohibit a wide range of semiautomatic center-fire sporting rifles with detachable ammunition magazines.