More Guns We Don’t Need

If not a single handgun was sold in California from this day on, there still would be too many. Not even the state Justice Department knows how many guns there are in California, but it is known that nearly 3 million handguns were sold legally in the state between 1988 and 1996.

Now, if Gov. Pete Wilson signs Sen. Richard G. Polanco’s SB 500 into law, it will become more difficult for a new generation of criminals to get their hands on weapons. And most assuredly, the law would save lives.

SB 500 would outlaw the manufacture and sale of those small, cheap handguns known as Saturday night specials. These are the sort of “junk guns” that have been banned from importation into the United States for nearly 30 years, since Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated with a similar weapon in Los Angeles. In fact, Polanco’s legislation is based on the definition of such guns in the federal law.

Of the 700 or so bills awaiting Wilson’s action, the Los Angeles Democrat’s legislation may present one of the toughest decisions for the Republican governor. Wilson’s grandfather, a Chicago policeman, was shot to death by a drug dealer. The California police chiefs and other law enforcement officials support the Polanco bill. Wilson has supported some gun control legislation in the past but vetoed other measures he saw as intrusive into individual rights.

Wilson also has been a champion of tough crime laws and the hero of victims rights groups. SB 500 won’t take away the guns now held by the thugs, as the governor calls them. But without this legislation, the sale of these nasty little weapons will continue unabated. And some day, a meeting of a victims rights organization may be attended by a grieving parent whose son or daughter might have been spared if SB 500 had been the law.