Gun Law Proposed in Low-Crime Irvine

The FBI considers Irvine one of the nation’s safest cities, a master-planned community where nagging issues range from lawn maintenance to the early morning howl of leaf blowers.

But there’s a new debate in town: gun control.

Civic leaders have been presented with a proposal that would be among the toughest gun laws in the state, making it nearly impossible for new retailers to sell firearms. All in a city where gun violence is minimal.

The proposed law, drafted by Councilman Chris Mears, would make it illegal to sell firearms within 1,000 feet of churches, schools, playgrounds or city-owned buildings. In Irvine, almost every commercial center is within a short walking distance of one or more of those.

“It’s simply an effort to provide us with a slightly greater degree of local control and confidence about gun sales,” Mears said.

And just in case there’s a corner of the city where a gun dealer could set up shop--something that won’t be known until the proposal is studied--the ordinance also would require the dealer to obtain a special business permit, pass a background check conducted by police, carry liability insurance and keep a log of all ammunition sales.

The proposal already has raised the ire of anti-gun-control lobbies.

“The ordinance is designed to harass and create bureaucracy and make it impossible for gun dealers to do business in the city,” said Chuck Michel, an attorney for the Fullerton-based California Rifle and Pistol Assn.

The proposed law, which won’t come before the City Council for at least a month, takes a different tack from state gun laws, which require a 10-day waiting period for firearm purchases. Such cooling-off periods allow the state Department of Justice time to screen a gun buyer’s background and check for felony convictions. Felons are prohibited from owning guns.

According to a survey by Legal Community Against Violence, a San Francisco-based organization that researches local gun measures, only three cities in the state have adopted laws that mirror what Mears is proposing: Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco. But each covers a far-flung geography where guns can be sold in certain areas and each has a higher crime rate than Irvine, which has been ranked among the nation’s 10 safest cities of its size for the last decade.

Dozens of other cities have experimented with restricted firearms sales--limiting calibers, types of weapons or high-powered bullets--but very few have adopted laws that could result in an outright ban on the sale of guns.

In 1997, the small Northern California town of Lafayette came close, imposing stiff restrictions on gun dealers, including a ban on gun stores within 1,000 feet of a park, school or residential area. The city’s sole gun dealer sued Lafayette and lost. But he didn’t challenge the 1,000-foot restriction, and city leaders said they haven’t conducted measurements to determine whether it would be illegal to sell guns in the city’s small retail core.

“We haven’t had any others wanting to come in and set up shop since then,” said Lafayette City Atty. Charles Williams.

Existing Retailers Would Be Exempted

Irvine is not awash in gun retailers either. Big 5 Sporting Goods, near city-run Alton Athletic Park, sells rifles and ammunition, and there are two licensed antique gun dealers. All would be exempt from the proposed law if it is adopted in its current state.

Conforming to local gun laws is nothing new to Big 5, said company spokesman Gabriel Friederitchsen. “There are already a number of cities that have implemented various gun control ordinances, and we abide by anything the local, state or federal authorities require,” he said.

Not all of Mears’ colleagues are impressed by the proposed gun law.

“It’s a rather puzzling ordinance,” Councilman Greg Smith said. “It feels good, but it doesn’t serve much of a purpose. It’s just a statement.”

Smith said the proposal falls in line with past efforts in Irvine to adopt “feel-good” laws that are largely symbolic, such as a previous council’s decision to declare the city a “nuclear-free zone.”

Michel, the rifle association attorney, said he hopes to persuade Mears to tackle gun control in other ways. “Irvine’s program wouldn’t address the illegal purchase of guns directly,” he said. “There are other programs that don’t require an ordinance and that deal with this problem much more effectively, and the dealers are happy to do it.”

Michel points to a program that Anaheim implemented in August 2000 that requires gun dealers to notify authorities immediately after someone has been denied authorization to purchase a firearm.

Typically, the Department of Justice notifies the dealer of its findings first. But sometimes, local authorities aren’t notified right away--or at all.

“What police in Anaheim did was go for a strategic alliance with the gun dealers, so if a dealer gets a reject notice from the Department of Justice, he calls the Anaheim Police Department right away,” said Michel, who worked with Anaheim in developing the program.

“Then when the guy goes to the store to pick up his gun, police can arrest him. So we get these people off the street rather than let them slip off into the wind.”

So far, the program has resulted in about a dozen arrests, said Anaheim Police Sgt. Rick Martinez.

“If we didn’t have this program in place, we wouldn’t have known about those 10 to 15 people,” he said. “They wouldn’t get the gun, but there also wouldn’t be any follow-through.”

Some cities have tried to regulate adult businesses through similar zoning laws, creating restrictions that prohibit them from operating within 1,000 feet of “sensitive” areas. But they don’t always hold up in court.

Simi Valley fought for several years to regulate adult businesses through a zoning law. But last year, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand an appeals court ruling that found the city had violated an adult club owner’s 1st Amendment rights by denying him a zoning permit.

But proponents of gun control measures say dealing with firearms is a different game altogether.

“Cities don’t have to have gun dealers in their community,” said Andres Soto, a policy analyst for Pacific Center for Violence Prevention, which tracks and promotes local gun control measures. “They have complete local discretion over what they want and don’t want within their city limits.”

Soto credits local gun laws such as the one Irvine is considering for a consistent decline in gun sales and gun-related deaths and injuries.

“In 1994, there were over 19,500 gun licensees in the state, and now there are below 3,500,” Soto said. “If you limit the number of conduits in which firearms come into a community and you regulate those that exist, you clean up the business. The result is less guns are sold, and gun crime goes down.”

And using the 2nd Amendment as a legal argument to fight such laws probably won’t be accepted in court, said Andy Spafford, a senior staff attorney for the Legal Community Against Violence.

“The 2nd Amendment only applies to the regulation of a state militia,” he said. “Since that isn’t impinged upon by regulating the location of gun dealers, you don’t have a basis for raising the 2nd Amendment as an issue.”

Mears, who said his proposed law was not motivated by a particular incident, said he is not trying to put anyone out of business. But he does want the city to pick up where state and federal gun laws leave off.

“It’s something we can do about the proliferation of gun violence in society,” he said. “And I think it’s appropriate for us on a local level to do what we can and say what kind of a community we want.”