Pasadena Repeals Ammunition Law, Rejects Alternative

The Pasadena City Council formally repealed its landmark ammunition registration ordinance Monday night, ignoring pleas to adopt an alternative proposal and salvage a policy that garnered the city national attention when it was enacted in 1995.

The council voted three months ago to tentatively repeal the law but had held off on a final vote until gun control advocates--including Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer--could draft an alternative measure. But the council rejected that alternative Monday night in a 5-2 vote.

“We are very happy the members of the Pasadena City Council have finally come to their senses and ended this worthless city ordinance,” said Joel Friedman, chairman of the National Rifle Assn.’s Pasadena chapter. “This is a vindication for those lawfully selling bullets in the city of Pasadena.”

Councilman Paul Little, who joined Councilman Sidney Tyler in opposing the repeal, said before the vote that revoking the law would be a mistake. “This is not going to stop any law-abiding citizen [from] buying ammunition. It can help stop people who shouldn’t buy ammunition from buying ammunition.”

The ammunition registration ordinance was initially enacted with great fanfare in the wake of a spate of gun violence in Pasadena. It required all purchasers of ammunition within the city limits to write their name and address in ledgers at the stores where the ammunition was purchased. The ledgers were collected by the Police Department.

The law was the first of its kind in the nation, and half a dozen Southern California cities, including Los Angeles, adopted similar statutes. But there was one problem--the Pasadena law, police said, was useless.

The registration information sat unused in a filing cabinet in police headquarters, and police investigators said it would not help them solve crimes because the information would not stand up in court. In fact, gun-related homicides rose in Pasadena during the law’s first year.

In May, during a required annual review of the law, the council voted 4 to 2 to repeal it. But council members agreed to wait for gun control advocates to bring them an alternative proposal before taking the second vote required to formally repeal the law.

The new version of the ordinance, modeled after a proposal Feuer made before the City Council, called for ammunition buyers to leave a thumbprint in the register in addition to their names and addresses. Police said that would give the information enough evidentiary value to help in investigations.

“I think it has the potential to help us,” Pasadena Police Chief Barney Melekian said before Monday’s vote on the rewritten ordinance. “In its previous form, it was of no use.”

But the National Rifle Assn. countered that even with the modification, the registration law had no value as a public safety tool.

In an earlier interview, Friedman of the NRA called the law “a piece of feels-good or sounds-good legislation that will again have absolutely no purpose, that will solve nothing.”

But Ibrahim Naeem, executive director of the Coalition for a Nonviolent City, said at Monday’s meeting that the coalition’s work to revise the law had produced an effective ordinance. “It helps the Police Department and makes our city safer,” he said.

The meeting was decidedly different from the one two years ago when gun control advocates filled the chambers to cheer the council’s 5-2 approval of the ordinance. On Monday, after the council had signaled its intent to revoke the law, attendance was sparse.

Last month, the seven-member council delayed a vote on the issue because some of its members were absent.

However, it adopted a host of other gun control measures, including requiring trigger locks on guns sold in the city limits and limiting the sales of firearms to certain industrial areas.

After Monday’s vote, Mayor Chris Holden, who two years ago voted for the ordinance, said the decision to repeal the law “says we want to have laws that have meaning and substance. [The ordinance] wasn’t working. We want laws on the books that are effective.”