Bill targeting gun shows, sales on state-owned fairgrounds reintroduced by O.C. senator
After a law that would have permanently banned the sales of firearms and ammunition on all state-owned property was narrowed last year to apply only to the Orange County fairgrounds, the senator who authored the bill is at it again.
Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine) announced in a media conference Thursday he has reintroduced legislation that, if passed, would implement a similar ban starting in January. Senate Bill 915 would enact the same prohibitions on all state-held facilities, including 73 fairgrounds across California.
He joined two Ventura County legislators — Sen. Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) and Assemblyman Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) — floating a similar countywide ban, Assembly Bill 1769, in the current legislative cycle.
“This bill is based on a very simple principal, that the state of California should not be profiting off the sale of guns — it’s blood money,” Min said of his senate bill during the virtual event. “We shouldn’t be facilitating the sale of weapons.”
Speakers at Thursday’s conference shared their consensus that even legally regulated gun shows are places where the parts for unregistered and unlicensed “ghost guns” can be purchased. They correlated the prevalence of gun violence to the sheer number and availability of firearms.
“There is a pervasive gun culture out there that has been stoked by this for-profit, pro-gun lobby that has jammed this proliferation of guns down the throats of our communities and in this country,” Bennett said. “Gun shows are more likely to have inappropriate actions and inappropriate connections take place — and these are on government-owned properties.”
In an interview Wednesday, Min said he had been caught off guard in August, when an earlier iteration of the bill — SB 264 — was amended at the last minute by the Assembly Appropriations Committee to apply only to the Orange County Fair & Event Center, which operates the Costa Mesa fairgrounds as the 32nd District Agricultural Assn.
Anticipating the local ban would take effect in January, OCFEC board members in September considered pre-approving a 2022 contract with Crossroads of the West, a Utah-based company that had held gun shows on the property since 1995, earning the center a collective $7 million, but ultimately tabled the matter.
State Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine) introduced SB 264 to end a long tradition of gun shows being held at state-owned county fairgrounds across the state. But an Assembly committee last week narrowed its scope to Orange County.
Min attributed what happened to SB 264 to his being a freshman senator still acclimating to how things are done. This time around, he plans to be more strategic in his approach to getting SB 915 passed.
“We’ll be making sure to have discussions with all the chairs of committee staff, to make sure we’re not blind-sided again,” he said. “We’ve basically got to do our homework and due diligence to make sure this has the votes on the floor that it needs — we just want to get it out.”
Limón said AB 1769 is not intended to conflict with Min’s statewide ban but, rather, to stand as a statement against gun violence in Ventura County, where 12 people were killed in a November 2018 shooting at Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks.
“I want to stand in solidarity with all of you, with the communities we represent to say we’ve heard you, we’ve been working with you and we will continue to do so as this legislative year goes forward,” she said.
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