As Los Angeles City Council members recently debated a proposal to keep guns away from certain criminals, the measure's author, public safety committee chairman Jack Weiss, called on the Police Department for an example of why the law was needed.
An LAPD detective laid out a "major" recent case -- that of a Simi Valley man, Wayne William Wright. After he was arrested for allegedly selling an illegal firearm, police seized more than 400 guns from Wright. Now his lawyer was trying to get them back.
What Weiss did not mention was that Wright was the client of his opponent in the city attorney's race, defense attorney Carmen Trutanich, and soon would be featured in Weiss' campaign commercials.
In their next face-to-face meeting, Weiss accused Trutanich of representing "a one-man armory" and trying "to get hundreds and hundreds of his illegal guns, semiautomatics, handguns, returned to him so he could get them back on the streets."
In rebuttal, Trutanich told the audience that Wright was a Vietnam War veteran and former law enforcement helicopter pilot who had failed to register his assault weapon.
Explaining why he wanted Wright to get his guns back, Trutanich told a vignette intended to tug at the heartstrings. It was Wright's custom, he said, to meet the planes carrying dead soldiers back from Iraq and to fire a weapon "in salute" at their grave sites. "I'm proud of what I did," Trutanich said.
The Wright case was just the latest tangle between the Westside councilman and the San Pedro defense attorney over gun issues in the bitterly fought city attorney's race, which will be decided in a runoff May 19.
Though Weiss says he began developing his "prohibited [gun] possessor" legislation long before he learned of Trutanich's involvement in the Wright case and a similar case in Los Angeles County, it bolstered the Trutanich campaign's argument that Weiss uses his chairmanship to advance his political goals.
For Trutanich, it underscored the difficulties of jumping into the political sphere from a small boutique law firm, whose clients include the National Rifle Assn. and California Rifle and Pistol Assn.
Trutanich said he has never represented the NRA "or any other gun entity like a club or CRPA," and says he disagrees with many of the organization's positions.
But some of the casework of his law partner, 2nd Amendment and NRA attorney C.D. "Chuck" Michel, has provided rich targets for Weiss, whose proposed gun ordinances have been questioned by Michel on Trutanich-Michel LLP letterhead.
