Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns From: [l v c] at [cbnews.cb.att.com] (Larry Cipriani) Subject: LOS ANGELES TO REVISE CONCEALED-WEAPONS POLICY Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1993 17:14:24 GMT The following article is under submission. Reproduction on computer bulletin boards is permitted for informational purposes only. Copyright (c) 1993 by J. Neil Schulman. All other rights reserved. LOS ANGELES TO REVISE CONCEALED-WEAPONS POLICY by J. Neil Schulman Well, here's a story you won't hear about on the evening news or in your local paper -- even if you live in LA. The Los Angeles Police Commission voted 4-0 last Tuesday, June 29, 1993 -- two days before newly elected mayor Richard Riordan took office -- to turn over the authority for issuing concealed-carry weapons licenses to the Chief of Police, and to adopt new ccw guidelines currently being written by LA City Attorney Byron Boeckman. Okay, what's the big deal in that? In 1974, when Tom Bradley was elected mayor of Los Angeles, he appointed a new police commission and told them he didn't want the City of Los Angeles issuing ccw licenses any more. The police commissioners, who serve at the pleasure of the mayor, complied by revoking the authority of the chief of police to issue ccw licenses, and took that authority upon itself. From 1974 until the present, the commission's official position on ccw licenses was as follows: ***************************************************************** BOARD POLICY CONCERNING LICENSES TO CARRY CONCEALED WEAPONS By operation of California law, Penal Code Section 12050, the Board of Police Commissioners has the discretionary authority to issue a license to carry a concealed weapon to a resident of the county provided that the person is of good moral character and that good cause exists for issuance of the license. However, experience has revealed that concealed firearms carried for protection not only provide a false sense of security but further that the licensee is often a victim of his own weapon or the subject of a civil or criminal case stemming from an improper use of the weapon. It is the Board's considered judgment that utilization of standard commercial security practices furnishes a security which is both more safe and more sure than that which obtains from the carrying of a concealed weapon. This judgment is in accord with the view of the California Peace Officers Association -- expressed formally on two occasions in 1968 and 1973 "that all permits to carry concealed weapons by private individuals in the State of California be revoked and that the legislation authorizing the issuance of such permits be repealed." For these reasons, considering the dangers to society resulting from possession and use of concealed weapons, it is the policy of this Board that "good cause" for the issuance of any concealed weapons license would exist only in the most extreme and aggravated circumstances. In the exercise of its discretion under the law, the Board will separately review each and every application made to the Board for a license to carry a concealed weapon under Section 12050 of the California Penal Code. I. Upon application to the Board on the form prescribed by the Attorney General pursuant to Section 12051 of the California Penal Code, extreme and aggravated circumstances shall not be deemed to exist unless all of the following conditions are attested by the applicant in a sworn affidavit presented to the Board. 1. That the applicant is a bona fide resident of the City of Los Angeles. 2. A statement of facts from which the Board could find that there is a clear and present danger that the life or personal safety of the applicant is in serious and immediate danger. 3. A statement of facts from which the Board could find that there are no other means whereby the personal safety of the applicant can be assured. 4. The applicant has no history of a mental or emotional condition, alcoholism, drug use or addiction. 5. That the applicant has never committed a felony or serious misdemeanor or engaged in any conduct from which the Board could find that he or she is not of good moral character. 6. That the applicant has never had a permit to carry a concealed weapon suspended or revoked by any issuing authority. II. The term of the license, if granted, shall not exceed 90 days and shall begin on the day that the applicant files with the Board a certificate of insurance in an amount to be determined by the Board, with the City of Los Angeles, as a named insured, insuring against any harm which may be caused as a result of the applicant's possession or use of a concealable firearm. The term of any license granted by the Board shall end automatically by operation of law upon any lapse in said insurance. III. The Board may attach such conditions as in the reasonable exercise o its discretion it deems appropriate, including but not limited to: 1. The type of weapon to be carried. 2. The type of ammunition to be permitted. 3. The times of day when the weapon may be concealed. 4. Limiting the carrying of a concealed weapon to occurrence of those circumstances when a specified dangerous activity is to be encountered and for which the applicant has sought the license. IV. The license, if approved, shall not become effective until the applicant has furnished proof to the Board that he or she has successfully completed the course of training in the carrying and use of firearms established pursuant to Section 7514.1 of the California Business and Professions Code. V. The license, if granted, shall lapse by operation of law if the licensee is convicted by final judgment of a felony or a serious misdemeanor, including driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs VI. The applicant will be required to furnish proof of his or her medical and psychological fitness in a manner to be prescribed by the Board. This shall include certification of the applicant's eyesight to meet the standards established by the California Department of Motor Vehicles for issuance of driver's license. VII. If any section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase or portion of this policy is for any reason held to be invalid or unconstitutional by the decision of any court of competent jurisdiction, such decision shall not affect the validity of the remaining portions of this policy. ***************************************************************** Most of the above was irrelevant for the 19 years this policy was in effect, because the commissioners only once granted a license to carry -- and that was in 1992, to their new Chief of Police, Willie Williams, who had not yet passed his qualifying exams as a California police officer, and was therefore not entitled to carry a gun. But during that period, the Los Angeles Police Department gun detail accepted applications, forwarded them to an officer who always found insufficient reason to recommend that it be granted, and after a hearing before the police commissioners, they voted to turn the application down, regardless of how much danger there was to the applicant. If there was someone the commissioners actually wanted to have a ccw license, they quietly called up Ted Cooke, Chief of Police of nearby Culver City -- and so pro-gun he's part owner of the Beverly Hills Gun Club -- and asked him to grant the license. Or they phoned LA County Sheriff Sherman Block who was sometimes willing to sign on the dotted line. Adding insult to injury, Commissioner Michael Yamaki secretly slipped over to Culver City (he wasn't a resident) and got a ccw license for himself. So much for their official opinion that "concealed firearms carried for protection not only provide a false sense of security but further that the licensee is often a victim of his own weapon or the subject of a civil or criminal case stemming from an improper use of the weapon." Meanwhile, a quarter of the gun owners polled by the \Los Angeles Times\ just before the April, 1992 riots admitted to carrying illegally on occasion, and when Los Angeles gun owners got caught, were subjected to a misdemeanor conviction carrying a six-month sentence which deprived them of the right to own a gun entirely, as a condition of probation or parole. After the LA riots, when thousands of Angelenos who'd been anti-gun changed their minds, it seemed a good time to try ending this impertinence. With firearms-activist, constitutional lawyer, and criminology professor Don Kates as attorney, and a prominent list of obviously-deserving plaintiffs, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Congress of Racial Equality -- later joined by NRA -- filed suit against the City of Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners for violating the state laws which required them to use their discretion in issuing ccw licenses. Saying "no" to everybody doesn't qualify as discretion, in previous California legal decisions. City Attorney Boeckman advised his clients, the Board of Police Commissioners, that they were going to lose the suit, which would have placed the issuance of ccw licenses under court supervision, aside from costing the city a bundle in legal costs defending the suit. The June 29th vote was a vote to settle. The terms are that if Los Angeles brings itself into compliance with state law and begins issuing licenses to the satisfaction of the plaintiffs, the law suit will be dropped in six months' time. It's expected that if Police Chief Willie Williams deals with ccw licenses pretty much the same way he did as Police Chief of Philadelphia -- where he signed around 4000 ccw licenses -- then LA should see around 10,000 licenses issued in the next few years. The new guidelines -- proposed by Don Kates, and now being reviewed by Boeckman and Chief Williams -- should be in place by around the middle of July. Big news, huh? You couldn't tell it from the pravda that passes for news in this country. Only one Los Angeles TV station covered this -- Channel 11, the Fox affiliate. Only one Los Angeles newspaper devoted any space at all to the story -- \The Daily News\, whose readership is largely in the conservative San Fernando Valley. The \Los Angeles Times\ barely mentioned it in a routine write-up of the weekly police commission meeting -- and made it sound in the one sentence they devoted to the subject as if the standards for getting a ccw license in Los Angeles were being \toughened\ by the commission. No TV network or major out- of-town newspaper covered the story at all -- of local interest only, I was told when I asked one TV network producer. Of course the shooting of a bunch of lawyers in San Francisco by a deranged real-estate developer made front-page news in Los Angeles, and saw major stories in the \New York Times\, \Washington Post\, and \USA Today\. Criminals with guns are news. Citizens with guns aren't. Oh, well. You heard it here, at least. ## J. Neil Schulman is a novelist and screenwriter. He lives in Los Angeles. -- Larry Cipriani -- [l v cipriani] at [att.com] or attmail!lcipriani