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