https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article249441480.html
By Ryan Sabalow February 23, 2021 05:00 AM,
{Triple Beam arrest leads to confiscation of a ghost gun outside a Fresno football game. This was one of over 120 arrests during a strategic gang enforcement effort led by the U.S. Marshals Service. By Craig Kohlruss}
A Southern California Democrat hopes Gov. Gavin Newsom will ban all guns and ammo sales on all state property, a move that would effectively end firearms shows at dozens of local fairs across the state.
Newly-elected California State Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, introduced SB 264, which would prohibit a state employee or operator of “state-owned property, from contracting for, authorizing, or allowing the sale of any firearm or ammunition.” The bill makes an exception for gun buy-back programs.
“The evidence is overwhelmingly clear — more guns lead to more violence,” the senator’s office said in a statement. “Gun violence splinters families and communities, and I am hopeful my colleagues will see taxpayers’ dollars have no place in funding the proliferation of gun sales and heartbreak.”
The legislation would make California the first state in the nation to prohibit gun shows at state-owned fairgrounds, and it sets the stage for yet another high-profile fight over gun regulations in a state that has over the years passed some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country, including some of the toughest regulations at gun shows.
Min’s bill follows previous legislative efforts to prohibit gun shows at individual fairgrounds, including at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in San Diego County and the Cow Palace in San Mateo County.
Gun rights activists and conservative local government leaders are gearing up for a fight in the legislature and in the courts, should Min’s bill pass. Tehama County Supervisor Bob Williams said gun shows provide a critical source of money for struggling fairgrounds.
“The fairgrounds are notoriously short of revenue every year just to try to stay in business. And to take one more thing away from them ... seems rather ridiculous to me,” Williams said.
There’s no clearinghouse for how many fairs across the state host or have hosted gun shows, nor are there any official estimates for how much money gun shows generate for local fairs. The bill applies to the 52 District Agricultural Associations that have fairgrounds across California.
State restrictions on crowd-sizes because of the COVID-19 pandemic have shuttered fairgrounds over the last year, making it even more difficult to come up with a tally. Meanwhile, one of the largest venues for gun shows, Cal Expo in Sacramento, hasn’t hosted a gun show at the state fairgrounds in at least three years, officials said.
The Western Fairs Association didn’t return messages seeking comment.
In one of the previous bills that sought to prohibit gun shows at the Cow Palace, opponents said canceling the shows would cut revenues by more than $730,000, and the annual loss in sales tax revenue would top $600,000. Gun shows at a fairground Orange County account for $715,000 in revenue.
Min’s bill would likely prove illegal if it passes both legislative chambers and Gov. Newsom signs it, said Sam Paredes, the executive director of Gun Owners of California.
“You can’t ban legal activities at publicly-owned facilities,” he said.
Brown, Schwarzenegger vetoed gun show bills
SB 264 may be the first legislative effort to ban gun shows at fairs statewide, but other efforts focused on prohibiting the shows at individual fairs have been a regular point of contention in the California legislature since Schwarzenegger’s term.
In 2009, Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have eventually prohibited gun shows at the Cow Palace. In his veto message, Schwarzenegger argued that the bill banning guns at one facility but not at dozens of others around California “set a confusing precedent” and “would result in decreased state and local tax revenues by restricting events at the Cow Palace.”
Four years later, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed another bill that sought to have supervisors of both San Mateo County and neighboring San Francisco County approve gun shows at the Cow Palace.
In his veto message, Brown argued the bill “pre-empts the Board of Directors of the Cow Palace from exercising its contracting authority whenever a gun show is involved. I prefer to leave these decisions to the sound discretion of the Board.” Brown vetoed a similar bill in 2018, citing similar arguments. Local fair board directors are gubernatorial appointees.
The Cow Palace board of directors later decided to stop hosting the gun shows in 2020.
Opponents of gun shows waited until Brown was out of office before advancing their next attempt at tackling gun shows on state property.
In 2019, Newsom signed San Diego Democrat Assemblyman Todd Gloria’s Assembly Bill 893, which prohibited gun shows at the Del Mar fairgrounds beginning this year.
Gloria’s bill followed the Del Mar fair board in 2018 voting after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida to suspend the following year its popular Crossroads of The West Gun Shows, five of which were held at the fairground each year.
The private company that put on the shows filed a lawsuit to block the board’s decision. Last year, the board signed a settlement with the company that awarded the gun show operators $500,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs.
At the time, Crossroads of The West Gun Shows promised to use the money to fight to overturn AB 893, which took effect Jan. 1.
No Crossroads of The West gun shows are listed as scheduled at the Del Mar fairgrounds on the company’s website. A message for the company wasn’t returned Monday.
Prior to the pandemic, California was estimated to be home to 4.2 million gun owners and another 3.1 million adults who live with them. Gun rights groups say more than 1 million Californians became new gun owners last year, mirroring a national surge in firearm sales.
Other bill bans ‘ghost gun’ parts
California was one of the states to first aggressively regulate sales at gun shows.
In 1999, California enacted the nation’s strongest gun show oversight rules. California requires that all gun sellers at a gun show obtain a certificate of eligibility from the state Department of Justice following a background check. Promoters also are required to have security plans, carry $1 million in liability insurance, and prohibit anyone under 18 from entering a show without a legal guardian.
California requires background checks for all firearm sales and transfers at the shows under the same process at a traditional storefront gun retailer.
Gun control advocates have pointed to studies that show California’s regulations may be more effective at preventing gun violence than at other less-regulated states.
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence cited one study that measured an increase in firearm deaths and injuries in California communities within driving distance of Nevada gun shows, a state where there are no explicit regulations on gun shows.
“By contrast, researchers measured no increase in gun deaths or injuries following gun shows in California, where there are multiple laws that govern gun show sales,” the gun-control group’s website says. “These results suggest that California’s gun show regulations may help to deter illicit firearm use.”
SB 264, which has yet to receive a formal hearing, isn’t the only gun-show-related bill that state lawmakers will hear this year.
Assembly Bill 311 by Assemblyman Christopher Ward, D-San Diego, would prohibit gun show retailers from possessing or selling what are called “firearm precursor parts,” used in do-it-yourself kits to assemble homemade weapons.
Gun control advocates say these so-called “ghost gun” parts lack serial numbers to trace ownership, making it difficult for law enforcement to keep track of them, and they’ve been used in some high-profile murders.
Law enforcement officials said Rancho Tehama gunman Kevin Janson Neal made at least two of his weapons, including an illegally modified Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle, out of mail-order parts before his 2017 shooting rampage in the Tehama County town killing five people before he shot himself.
Sacramento Police Officer Tara O’Sullivan allegedly was murdered in 2019 by Adel Sambrano Ramos, who faces charges of illegally making two AR-15 style rifles and of converting three other AR-15 style semi-automatic rifles into machine guns.
Gun rights groups say Newsom already signed legislation that would address the issue.
In 2019, the governor signed a bill that will require in 2025 precursor parts to be treated the same as regular firearms, and be sold only through a dealer and with a background check.
New legislation would make California the first state in the nation to prohibit gun shows at state-owned fairgrounds. Lynne Sladky AP
Ryan Sabalow covers environment, general news and enterprise and investigative stories for McClatchy’s Western newspapers. Before joining The Bee in 2015, he was a reporter at The Auburn Journal, The Redding Record Searchlight and The Indianapolis Star.
