City Sets Sights on Gun Sales

A law requiring gun buyers in Los Angeles to first be fingerprinted advanced Monday even as the measure was targeted by gun merchants and the National Rifle Assn.

The City Council’s Public Safety Committee recommended that the ordinance be drafted and sent to the full council for adoption. Councilman Mike Feuer said his proposal would help police and prosecutors track down and jail felons who try to buy guns, although they are barred from owning firearms.

Feuer also believes the law would deter felons and others prohibited from owning a guns because of domestic violence convictions from even trying to buy a gun in Los Angeles.

“If a dangerous felon is trying, after having been prosecuted and put in prison, to purchase a weapon again, how likely is it that the person is going to do something of a criminal nature?” Feuer asked the committee. “It’s extremely likely. We should be finding a way to put those people in jail.”

Nearly 5,000 people attempting to acquire firearms from licensed gun dealers in California in 1999 were stopped by background checks by the California Department of Justice, Feuer said. They included 17 people convicted of homicide, he said.

Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, the committee chairwoman, agreed that the proposal is a logical next step for the city, which already requires people to give a thumbprint when they buy ammunition. “The irony is we fingerprint for buying ammunition, but we don’t for buying a gun,” Miscikowski said. “We really should do that.”

Police Chief Bernard Parks and the city attorney’s office support the measure.

But gun sellers and activists for gun-owner rights say the proposal will add unnecessary red tape and potentially scare away legally qualified customers.

“It’s a bad idea,” said Jim Hoag, the owner of Hoag Gun Works in Canoga Park. “We’re going to more regulation, which will lead to confiscation. It wouldn’t touch felons. The only ones it will affect are law-abiding citizens.”

Hoag said people legally permitted to buy guns but not willing to give their fingerprints to the government may decide to go outside city limits to make their purchase.

Steve Jacobson, who owns a gun store and pawnshop near the Coliseum, said Feuer’s proposal is unnecessary because the Department of Justice already blocks sales to felons after checking applications.

“It’s just a waste of time,” Jacobson said. “There are so many regulations on guns already. A lot of gun stores are going out of business.”

Noting that Feuer is running for city attorney, Steve Helsley of the National Rifle Assn. charged that the proposal is an attempt to grab headlines without solving any problem. As it is, Helsley said, felons caught trying to buy guns aren’t prosecuted. “All this is designed to do is harass legitimate gun buyers, because there has never been any inclination to prosecute violators,” Helsley said. “This is political posturing to deny law-abiding folks the ability to buy a handgun.”

Feuer said the failure to prosecute felons who try to buy guns is one of the reasons he proposed the measure. Without strong physical evidence such as fingerprints, Feuer said, prosecutors are reluctant to charge someone who can claim they were not the person who filed the application to buy a gun.

Carmel Sella, special assistant city attorney, said fingerprints would give prosecutors more confidence in filing cases.

“It does pose a serious evidentiary problem not to have evidence such as fingerprints to identify the person who is buying the gun,” she said.

Under the proposed measure, fingerprint records would be kept at the business, not entered into a government database--a provision agreed to in an effort to address complaints about the measure invading privacy.

The fingerprints would only be used as a backup to help police verify violations caught by the state Department of Justice in reviewing applications for gun ownership, Sella said.