MESSAGE BOARD: Guns under fire

August 25, 1999
Web posted at: 2:11 a.m. EDT (0611 GMT)

In this story: Semi-automatic weapons 'ravaged' schools, day-care centers Turning down $9 million Washington gun buying program draws big response RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- After a national spate of violence that took the lives of students at a Colorado school, workers at day trading offices in Atlanta, and locally, left children wounded at a Jewish Community and a postal worker dead, Los Angeles has had enough.

The county on Tuesday voted to put the "world's largest gun show" out of business. The Great Western Show draws some 100,000 customers annually to its 2,000 weapons-related exhibits. It convenes four times a year at the Los Angeles County fairgrounds in Pomona.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a new police program to pay $100 for each gun turned in netted 400 guns in the first half-hour of the program's operation, and more than 1,000 guns in a single day.

By 3 to 2, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to ban gun and ammunition sales on county property -- meaning that the heavily attended Great Western show will not be held at the fairgrounds in Pomona, as it has been for 30 years.

But the show organizers say they will fight back: They plan to file a lawsuit challenging the county's action.

"I think today's vote was a historic vote taken by the nation's largest county, which has been host to the largest gun show in the world," Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said.

The ban would leave the Great Western Gun Show without the home it has had for 30 years at the fairgrounds in Pomona

"Gun violence has ravaged this country. Illegal automatic and semi-automatic weapons have ravaged the schools, day-care centers, day camps, and other public institutions and religious institutions all over the United States," said Yaroslavsky, who sponsored the measure.

The board will take up the issue a second time in the next few weeks and, if given final approval, the measure would go into effect 30 days later.

Howevever, Great Western general manager Chad Seger said, "Right now we're proceeding as though the show is still on."

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ban gun sales on county property

The Great Western show pumps about $9 million a year into the local economy, Great Western President Karl Amelang told the supervisors before they voted to ban it.

Amelang said Great Western would take legal action against the board and accused it of aiming at the wrong target.

"Instead of addressing the underlying causes for the unfortunate assaults by twisted minds on innocent victims, this motion is a thinly veiled attempt to destroy the constitutional rights of a legal entity," he said.

The vote came 14 days after white supremacist Buford Furrow Jr., 37, allegedly walked into the North Valley Jewish Community Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Granada Hills and opened fire, wounding two women and three small boys, including a 5-year-old who nearly died from his wounds.

Hours later, Furrow then allegedly shot and killed mailman Joseph Ileto. Furrow turned himself in to FBI agents in Las Vegas, reportedly saying that he had targeted the center as a "wake-up call" to America to kill Jews and had killed Ileto because the postman was a "nonwhite" government worker.

Under the new county law, Great Western Shows, which runs the gun show four times a year at the Pomona fairgrounds, can exhibit guns there but not sell them.

Amelang said the show was mostly for Western Americana collectibles, including antique firearms and "cowboy and Indian artifacts," with only 10 percent of exhibit tables selling modern guns.

The supervisors who voted for the law were supported by Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and Los Angeles City Police Chief Bernard Parks, who said residents of Southern California wanted to end gun violence in their region.

Parks earlier Tuesday proposed a new gun buyback program to police commissioners. Under the program, people who surrendered a weapon to police would get tax breaks instead of cash.

An officer inspects a weapon turned in Tuesday during the guns-for-cash program in D.C.

Washington, D.C., is among other cities taking already steps to control gun violence with gun buyback programs.

Assistant Chief Terry Gainer said Washington inaugurated the $100,000 buyback program this week, paying $100 for each gun turned over to police. In the first half-hour on Monday, 400 guns were turned in to seven police district offices. By late Monday, 1,164 guns had been exchanged for payment.

The program accepts any handgun that wasn't registered prior to 1976, any long gun that hasn't been registered, or any sawed-off weapon "And you do see a lot of sawed off shotguns and rifles here," Gainer said.

"Now what we're going to do with each one of these weapons, is we will do ballistic firing of them and take the results of that test and run it against our own evidence as well as that gathered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

"If any of those guns come up 'hot', that is, they were used in a homicide or shooting, we will then assign our agents or Federal Agents to complete that investigation and whatever results from that, we'll present to the U.S. Attorney for prosection," Gainer said.

"This is not business as usual. I think we're all a bit surprised at the volume of guns and the range of destructiveness," represented, Gainer said.

"Last night, we got a live grenade. And it strikes me if that's the only weapon we got for $100,000 that can prevent a lot of pain.

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