Gun Sales Shoot Up at Year's End

Is it a fear of the millennium or just a rush to beat a barrage of anti-gun laws?

It made no difference at JR's Range & Gun Room in Long Beach, where the year ended with a bigger bang than ever before.

"It's been a madhouse around here," said the shooting range's owner, Steve Ditullio. "People have been lining up to play with their new toys: their guns. Some of them have never held a weapon before, and they don't have any idea how to load it."

The picture was being repeated at gun shops and shooting ranges across the state this week as gun sales--in decline for several years--ended 1999 with a sales spurt.

Statewide sales over the first 14 days of December nearly doubled the previous year's--from 19,500 to 38,100.

Experts, who had seen a smaller but significant increase in such purchases since the year began, attributed them to fears about chaos that would result from computer crashes with the coming of the year 2000 and the desire to purchase assault-type weapons before state legislation restricting such sales takes effect today.

The new law bans the sale of certain semiautomatic weapons based on a generic description of the guns, and it prohibits the sale of semiautomatic weapons that hold more than 10 bullets. Owners of existing weapons fitting the definition must register them with law enforcement beginning today.

"We deal with upscale customers who already have guns, but they are here buying more," said Ted Szajer, who owns L.A. Guns on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. "This time last year, we were virtually doing no business."

The story was the same at Firepower Inc. in Monterey Park.

"People are not just purchasing guns, they are buying solar powered radios and water filters," said Wayne Wong, who owns Firepower. "They are concerned about the New Year's celebration, but these are people who also don't like the government telling them what they can and can't buy."

The first indication of spiraling gun sales came last fall when state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer released statistics showing that sales of handguns and long guns--a category that covers shotguns and rifles, some of which are military-style assault weapons--rose almost 31% over the first six months of 1999, to 213,468 from 163,060 during the same period in 1998.

Subsequently, state Department of Justice officials found November gun sales jumped from 32,000 in 1998 to about 52,000 this year, or almost 63%.