A Move Toward Sanity

Navigators of America’s bewildering political landscape frequently look to California for their signposts to the future. Often, what they see is cryptic or banal. Those who look westward Monday, however, will see a landmark whose meaning and significance are unmistakable.

On Jan. 1, the state’s ban on the manufacture and sale of more than 50 specified semiautomatic rifles, shotguns and pistols originally designed solely for use against human beings will take effect. Californians who already own these so-called assault weapons will be required to register them. Passage of this simple, common-sense statute represents the overwhelming sentiment not only of Californians, but also of most Americans, that something must be done to reduce the number of military-style firearms that now find their way with ease into the hands of the deranged and the criminal.

Unfortunately, it required an atrocity before the state’s Legislature allowed this public sentiment its rightful expression. No one should delude themselves: Had a disturbed petty criminal not murdered five small children and wounded more than two dozen others when he sprayed a Stockton elementary school playground with his legally purchased assault rifle early last year, there would be no law to celebrate Monday. The scale of slaughter required to embolden Congress to follow California’s lead with rational federal regulation of military-style weapons remains to be discovered.

The National Rifle Assn.--whose single-issue approach to legislative politics so often disregards the real interests of the law-abiding hobbyists and sportsmen who make up the bulk of its members--opposed California’s assault weapon ban from the moment it was proposed until the day it passed. But while its lobbyists failed on that bill, they succeeded in intimidating the state Senate into defeating another, equally important proposal for sane firearms regulation.

That measure--AB 497, introduced by Assemblyman Lloyd G. Connelly, a Sacramento Democrat--passed the Assembly only to go down to defeat at the eleventh hour in the other chamber. However, the bill has won reconsideration and another vote will occur in the Senate sometime this month. The measure has the support not only of the Senate’s Democratic President Pro Tem, David Roberti of Los Angeles, but also of conservative Republican Sen. Ed Davis, former Los Angeles police chief. Connelly’s bill is, in fact, supported by every major law enforcement organization in the state.

It is easy to see why. AB 497 simply proposes to extend the existing 15-day wait between the purchase of a handgun and its delivery to all sales of all firearms. The two-week interval will allow the Department of Justice to ensure that the buyer is not a person prohibited from owning a gun. These would include individuals found mentally infirm under law, convicted felons, those found guilty of specified violent misdemeanors within the previous 10 years and individuals prohibited from possessing a weapon as a condition of probation.

The Senate’s failure to pass AB 497 represents a retreat from the moral and political bravery it showed in passing the landmark ban on assault weapons. The chamber now has a second chance to show that it does not require the sight of a playground awash in blood before it screws up enough courage to do the right thing.