Sales of Guns Still Strong in Ventura County : Weapons: The arms buildup began after the riots. One merchant says most buyers are from the middle class and are first-time purchasers.

More than three months after the Los Angeles riots, residents of Ventura County are continuing to buy more guns and ammunition than at any time in the recent memory of gun shop owners.

“The calls I get tell me people still want to own a gun and they are very worried about another riot situation developing,” said Fred Romero, the Simi Valley-based Southern California director for the National Rifle Assn. “They just don’t want to be caught off guard or unprotected.”

Handguns, rifles, shotguns and cases of ammunition are being purchased in record numbers from Thousand Oaks to Oxnard, according to gun shop owners. And, they add, many are new gun owners--residents who were stunned at the civil unrest sparked by the not guilty verdicts in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers in the Rodney G. King beating.

“Most of the people who are buying guns are from the middle class who are terrified that the have-nots are going to take what they have away from them,” said Judy Cotter, owner of Hilldale Sales, a big Simi Valley gun store.

Recalling the long consumer lines in her shop after rioting broke out in Los Angeles in late April, she said: “Half the people who bought weapons were first-time buyers. One woman had this ‘Dirty Harry’ image and wanted a weapon that would blow away an elephant.”

Included in the initial wave of buyers, she said, was a Los Angeles Police Department officer, still wearing a flak jacket, who rushed in and bought several rounds of ammunition, “throwing the bullets in a box.”

But, for the most part, the customers who queued up to pay several hundred dollars for armed protection were “wearing suits and ties and were quiet,” Cotter said.

Part of the rush for weapons was caused by the Los Angeles Police Department’s initial inability to control the riots, said her husband, Steve Cotter, who waits on customers with a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson stuffed into his holster.

This spawned a public perception that “if the police can’t handle it, we’ll handle it ourselves,” he said.

Still, purchasing a gun is not like buying an appliance, said Roy K. Craik, whose firearms store, C Crest Arms, is near the Simi Valley Courthouse where the trial in the King beating was held.

“I tell people that deadly force is something you can’t take back,” Craik said. “Are you willing to kill someone and live with it for the rest of your life?”

So far, there are mixed reports from authorities over whether the increase of guns among citizens is complicating life for law enforcement officials.

Debbie Ruud, crime analyst for the Simi Valley Police Department, said that weapons violations have been dropping this year in her jurisdiction despite the riots.

Ventura County Assistant Sheriff Oscar Fuller said his agency has not seen any significant increase in assaults with firearms or incidents involving concealed weapons since the Los Angeles unrest.

But David Keith, senior crime analyst for the Oxnard Police Department, said weapons violations have gone up in Oxnard since the rioting.

“There’s been an increase in gun situations, in concealed weapons,” he said.

Keith, who also manages Oxnard’s crime prevention program, said he is apprehensive about all of the guns being bought by the public.

“The majority of people won’t learn how to use them,” he said.

Tracking the number of guns in public hands is the job of the California attorney general’s firearms unit.

Under a law that took effect in 1975 for handguns, and was extended in 1991 to rifles and shotguns, state residents must wait 15 days before they can take possession of a firearm.

According to the attorney general’s figures, gun sales this year in Ventura County were proceeding at a fairly normal pace--until the riots.

In April, 251 handguns were sold in the county, according to the state. Then came the horror of April 29. In May, Ventura County sales jumped to 872 handguns, the figures show.

Among the purchasers was Jackie Simpson, 29, of Simi Valley, who had never owned a gun in her life.

“I saw all that looting going on on television and thought: ‘This is bull. . . ,’ ” said Simpson, Simi Valley branch manager for State Mortgage, a real estate finance company.

“Then I heard people saying we’ll burn Simi Valley. I was really frightened. So I looked in the Yellow Pages, and Crest was closest to my house.”