Gun Permits in County on the Increase

The number of Ventura County residents who can legally carry a gun has more than doubled since 1995, reaching the highest level in two decades as law enforcement officials have loosened guidelines on carrying concealed weapons.

For years, local sheriff and police departments issued permits only to residents whose lives were threatened or were considered targets because of the nature of their work--such as judges, attorneys, body guards and gem couriers.

But a change in philosophy imposed by Sheriff Bob Brooks and Simi Valley Police Chief Randy Adams has increased the number of gun permits from 245 six years ago to at least 548 today.

Sheriff since 1998, Brooks has approved 238 new permits. Brooks believes the extra permits make Ventura County--already the safest urban area in the West--even safer, because, he said, only upstanding citizens receive permits. He cited the experience of Texas, Florida and Arizona, where he believes liberalized gun-carrying policies have led to less violent crime.

“Our experience here is that people have protected themselves and deterred crime with these weapons,” Brooks said. “There was a situation in Thousand Oaks, where a car was being broken into and the man showed his gun and the individual took off. We don’t have any incidents of the guns being used irresponsibly.”

The increase in permits is in part a reflection of society’s concern about workplace and school violence, he said.

“Workplace violence wasn’t an issue 10 years ago or much of one five years ago, just like school violence,” Brooks said. “But now you can’t go a week without seeing an incident somewhere. And employers who’ve been threatened are taking it very seriously.”

A fired computer programmer fatally shot his former boss at a Camarillo software company in January 1999. And a gun-toting former Hueneme High School student took a student hostage on campus this year, prompting police to kill him.

About two dozen business executives--most from Thousand Oaks and Camarillo--have received gun permits from the sheriff in recent years, records show. Six teachers now have gun permits, including two issued this year.

Brooks said he awards permits to select county residents who perceive a threat to their safety, not just those who have actually been threatened or whose occupations make them a target.

Likewise, in Simi Valley, Adams has changed the standard for concealed weapons. That city issued just one permit in 1990 and had fewer than 20 when Adams was appointed chief in late 1995.

“They’ve tripled since I became chief,” Adams said.

“If you are a law-abiding citizen and you feel you need one for your protection, and if you have a clean background and test to be mentally and emotionally stable and you demonstrate proficiency with the weapon, then most likely we’re going to issue you one,” he said.

Most Simi Valley permit holders travel into Los Angeles and claim that as the legally required “good cause” for needing a weapon, Adams said.

Sandi Webb is one of those. The former Simi Valley councilwoman created a media stir in 1995 when she insisted it was her “God-given right” to pack a pistol when she took her young daughter to acting sessions in Los Angeles even without a concealed weapon permit.

She now has a permit and takes some credit for opening up the Police Department so others can obtain one. In addition to the 61 permits city police have issued, the sheriff has handed out 35 to Simi Valley residents.

“I don’t believe there should even be a permit to carry a gun,” Webb said last week. “The 2nd Amendment gives us that right. But I do think it’s a good thing they’re beginning to loosen up and give them to honest citizens.”

A national move to relax concealed weapons laws has sparked angry debate between those who say citizens have a constitutional right to carry weapons and critics who insist that every additional weapon on the street creates the potential for more violence.

The rift exists even among law enforcement officials.

Bernard Parks, police chief in Los Angeles, has imposed a virtual moratorium on new permits, and his department has fewer than 100 outstanding, a spokesman said. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has only 470 permit holders, and most are judges or prosecutors. And Santa Barbara County has only 128.

More Permits Issued in Other Locales

In contrast, other Southland sheriffs have issued many more permits: at least 4,000 in Kern County, about 2,000 in San Bernardino County, about 1,900 in San Diego County and about 700 in Orange County.

“We’re very, very selective in issuing these permits,” Brooks said.

Even with its total of at least 548 gun permits, Ventura County has hardly returned to the gun-toting days of the Wild West. Or even to 1975, when the local Sheriff’s Department issued about 2,000 permits.

But police chiefs in Oxnard and Santa Paula favor keeping gun permits at an absolute minimum.

Bob Gonzales, police chief in Santa Paula, said he has issued no new permits since he took office in 1999, but has renewed three.

“To me the issue is: Do they really need them, and are they functional with them,” he said. “I just don’t want people out there, licensed with my name, carrying guns if they don’t know what to do with them. I’d require training every six months.”

Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez, a veteran of the Los Angeles department, endorses that agency’s strict policies on gun permits, spokesman David Keith said.

“He would like to see as few of those permits in Oxnard as possible,” Keith said. “I suspect he hasn’t issued a single one outside those to retired officers.”

Yet, 49 Oxnard residents hold gun permits from the sheriff, nearly all issued during Brooks’ tenure.

For instance, former Oxnard Planning Commissioner Tony Grey said he applied to the sheriff because the city was reluctant to renew his permit. Grey’s permit request has been approved by Brooks.

“Oxnard just told me they cut down [on permits],” said Grey, who is retired from the military. Grey said he regularly carries a weapon because his wife operates a beauty shop and “there have been several criminal activities in the area.”

The beauty shop, however, has never been robbed, and Grey said he has never been threatened.

“It makes me feel more secure and safe,” he said.

In California, sheriffs and police chiefs can grant gun permits, valid throughout the state, if those applying are of good character and show a “good cause” to carry a weapon. A class is also required during which applicants study laws controlling the use of weapons and demonstrate their skill at a firing range.

Occupations of Permit Holders Are Varied

In Ventura County, concealed weapons are legally carried by people ranging from victims of domestic violence to former Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino, who has held a permit since 1960 and once said he had been threatened more times than he could remember.

Gun dealers, retired military officers and security company managers have numerous weapons permits. So do doctors, pharmacists and airline pilots.

“A lot of doctors carry pharmaceuticals or have them in their offices and are targets for theft,” Brooks said. “Or they at least have a fear about it.”

Actors such as Tom Selleck, a Hidden Valley resident, and Larry Hagman, who lives on a Sulphur Mountain ridge, attract unwanted attention that makes them feel threatened.

“They have people, who because of their celebrity, stalk them on a periodic basis,” Brooks said.

A Ventura journalist, a Thousand Oaks mortician, a Simi Valley disc jockey, a Moorpark bar owner and an Ojai park ranger also hold gun permits from the sheriff. So does a NASA flight engineer in Simi Valley and a deputy Santa Monica city attorney who lives in Bell Canyon.

Brooks has qualified former Thousand Oaks Planning Commissioner Forrest Frields to receive a permit after the professional photographer said he needed a weapon to protect camera equipment and cash he receives at events.

“Certainly I feel like a potential target,” Frields said. “I’m from Texas, but I’m no gun-crazed redneck. I’m a longtime gun owner and hunter and pistol-shooter. And I realize that some areas of our society are going to hell in a handbasket.”

Two years ago, Frields said, he was stalked after photographing a wedding at a private Westlake home.

“I saw him come out of the bushes, and I set my equipment down and faced him,” Frields said. “I said, ‘What do you want?’ And he said, ‘I just thought I’d say goodbye.’ And he walked back inside.”

Several permit holders work odd hours in isolated areas where police cannot readily protect them. For instance, numerous ranchers have held permits for decades.

“They’re isolated,” Brooks said. “And if they run into people stealing equipment or commodities they’re by themselves.”

Several public officials can also carry guns, including county Tax Collector Hal Pittman, county Clerk Richard Dean, county Agriculture Commissioner Earl McPhail and Thousand Oaks building inspector Jesus Mosqueda.

Lawyers, especially high-profile prosecutors and defense attorneys, hold more gun permits than people in any other profession. Nearly a dozen prosecutors have permits.

Threats are part of his job, Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said. He has had a permit since the 1970s and is authorized to carry a .357 magnum. Bradbury said he has never been forced to fire it.

But he said he has pulled it three times in the past decade--in helping arrest a murder suspect who unexpectedly returned home, in assisting a California Highway Patrol officer who had pulled over a drug suspect, and when confronted by three men while on vacation.

“Three guys were trying to rob me in Arizona,” Bradbury said. “But it was the old story of bringing a knife to a gun fight. And they just ran off.”

Three prisoners or parolees have been convicted in the past 10 years of threatening Bradbury’s life, the district attorney said.

Seven jurists, including five on the local bench, have sheriff’s gun permits--Commissioner Gary Barrett and Judges Rebecca Riley, James Cloninger, Roland Purnell and Barry Klopfer.

Klopfer, who has lost an arm and both legs to amputation, said as both a prosecutor and a judge he has seen the potential “for difficulty arising on short notice.”

“And I personally recognize that I simply have no means of dealing with that challenge myself,” he said. “I can’t run, I can’t hide.”

The only court shooting that veterans can remember occurred 23 years ago in Purnell’s courtroom, when a distraught wife shot and wounded her husband in a domestic dispute.

“The judge was not on the bench, but he responded from his chambers and did have a gun in his hand,” said Capt. Richard Diaz, head of courthouse security.

Since a full metal screening system was installed at the courthouse entry two years ago, two guns have been confiscated and thousands of knives, Diaz said. The owner of one gun had a concealed weapon permit and one did not, he said. “The lady was a bar owner, and she forgot she had the gun.”

Whether they carry a gun or not, many Ventura County residents are armed, a Los Angeles Times Poll found in 1997.

Twenty-seven of every every 100 Ventura County residents--or 63,000--keep guns in their homes. That is about the same proportion as found across the state and the nation, the poll found.

Of those, 6,900 said they sometimes carry a loaded firearm in their car, and about 3,800 admitted to occasionally packing a pistol on their bodies. That compares with 548 who legally hold gun permits.

“These people are not the problem,” Brooks said.

Concealed Weapons Permits

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By police agency 1983 1990 1995 2001 Sheriff’s Dept. 369 156 200 484 Oxnard 38 14 21 -- Simi Valley -- 1 13 61 Santa Paula 2 2 5 3 Ventura 7 2 3 -- Port Hueneme 3 2 3 -- County Total 432 177 245 548*

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*The Sheriff’s Department issues concealed weapons permits to residents in every local city plus the unincorporated area. City police departments may also issue permits. But since 1999, the Ventura Police Department has ceded that responsibility to the sheriff. Oxnard and Port Hueneme still issue a few, but precise numbers are not available.

Source: Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and city police departments