Policy to Encourage Safer Guns Proposed

The county Board of Supervisors has proposed giving preference to firearms manufacturers that include trigger locks, child safety devices and other features when the county buys guns for the Sheriff’s Department and other agencies.

“There’s a real opportunity to, if nothing else, get gun manufacturers to understand their responsibility to these consumers and their responsibility to these communities,” said Supervisor Gloria Molina, who proposed the plan Tuesday.

Modeled on the agreement between Smith & Wesson and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the county policy would take into account the safety and marketing practices of manufacturers.

Molina and other supervisors said they hope the policy, to be drawn up by county staff and submitted for approval this summer, would pressure manufacturers into making safer firearms. To ensure competition, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky amended the proposal to repeal the Sheriff’s Department’s decades-long agreement to buy guns solely from Beretta.