https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-05-17-mn-415-story.html

UNDER FIRE: GUNS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY : Proliferation of Guns May Be Bloody Legacy of Riots : Violence: Thousands of weapons were stolen as stores were systematically looted. Also, merchants and residents are arming themselves for protection.

By DAVID FREED
MAY 17, 199212 AM
TIMES STAFF WRITER

As many as 1,700 guns were stockpiled for sale inside the Western Surplus store on South Western Avenue when rioting broke out last month. Within hours, suspected gang members broke in and carted off every last one of them--plus ammunition.

Outside the riot-damaged areas, fearful residents crowded into gun stores, clamoring for firearms and buying the only ones immediately available--surplus rifles from World War II.

Inside ravaged neighborhoods, the vast majority of shooting victims were killed not by police officers or soldiers--as in the 1965 Watts riots--but by gun-toting rioters.

Burning and beatings may have produced the most indelible images during the riots of 1992, but bullets accounted for the greatest human wreckage.

And it is gun-related violence, authorities believe, that promises to endure as a bloody legacy to the riots: Dozens of pawnshops and other businesses stocked with firearms were systematically looted during the first few hours of unrest, putting thousands of guns in the hands of criminals.

Within days, guns were turning up on the black market. Suspected gang members were offering stolen pistols for sale at Skid Row hotels in downtown Los Angeles, residents said. Nearby, amid grocery shoppers at the Grand Central Market, a well-dressed man discreetly peddled a semiautomatic handgun for $10.

There was no shortage of guns and gunfire in Los Angeles County before the riots. While at least 40 people were shot to death during the unrest, nearly three times that number were gunned down in March, coroner's records show.

But with thousands of additional guns now on the streets, some authorities believe, the gunfire could escalate. Sniper attacks on police officers have increased dramatically in the past two weeks, authorities say, and many are taking seriously intelligence reports that gang members with enlarged arsenals plan to wage war on officers after National Guard troops leave the city.

"Rumors about killing cops are nothing new," said Cmdr. Robert S. Gil, a Los Angeles police spokesman, "but this does give us pause, especially when you consider the theft of hundreds of weapons."

Guns were never so visible in modern-day Los Angeles as they were during the riots.

Scattered looters with handguns roamed downtown on the first night of violence, firing at random--or at anything that got in their way. Vigilantes nervously clutched pistols while patrolling the perimeters of apartment houses in Hollywood. Armed merchants in Koreatown and South Los Angeles barricaded themselves behind makeshift fortifications or manned rooftops to take aim at would-be thieves and arsonists.

A Times Poll found that 9% of adults in Los Angeles--including 31% of gun owners--carried a firearm during the riots.

Norm Simples was among those who came to value a good gun in bad times.

Throughout much of the rioting, he and a handful of his employees used hunting rifles, shotguns and pistols to defend their mini-mall at Vermont and Manchester avenues. They expended more than 250 rounds of ammunition, firing into the air to deter marauders, he said.

"Look around," Simples said, pointing to the charred remnants of buildings across Vermont Avenue. "We were the only ones that didn't get burned."

Only after troops ordered them out of the area, Simples said, was there any looting of his property.

Other gun owners, including retired dentist Nicholas Zrinyi, 75, found comfort in keeping a firearm within reach during the unrest. Zrinyi, who lives near Inglewood and could see smoke and fire from his house, said he unlocked his pistol on the second day of rioting and kept it on his bedroom night stand until the riots ended.

The last time he took out a gun, he said, was during the Watts riots.

"I don't think anything would've happened in this neighborhood," Zrinyi said, "but you never know."

Having a gun, however, did not always ensure safety.

Northern California businessman Howard Epstein flew to Los Angeles on the second day of violence to check on his machine shop near 7th and Slauson avenues. Driving in from the airport, he was shot to death and his car looted. Police discovered a holster on Epstein's belt, leading to speculation among detectives that he may have driven into trouble, drawn a gun to scare away would-be assailants and was shot.

Including Epstein, at least 40 of the more than 50 people whose deaths have been linked to the riots were killed by gunshots.

More than three-quarters of the victims were slain by someone other than the police or military. The opposite was true during the Watts riots, in which soldiers and officers were responsible for 23 of 31 shooting deaths.

In the months after the Watts riots, authorities recovered 851 guns and concluded that "a substantial number" had been taken from pawnshops that were among the first businesses targeted by looters.

History repeated itself in the 1992 riots. Of 10 pawnshops randomly checked by The Times in South Los Angeles and Koreatown, every one had been looted. As of Friday, police officers in the riot zones had recovered 305 guns--most of them stolen or used during the unrest. Roughly the same number had been recovered in the three months preceding the riots.

At Westside Loan, a pawn brokerage on West Jefferson Boulevard, looters pried off steel security bars to gain entry and used a blowtorch to peel open a floor safe that was crammed with pistols and revolvers. Owner Joel Mendelsohn estimated that he lost at least 1,500 handguns, rifles and shotguns--although the actual number, he said, easily could be twice that.

The shop was also looted during the Watts riots but gun losses were minimal then, Mendelsohn said, because the police secured the neighborhood more quickly.

"This time was (more) dangerous," Mendelsohn said. "You're dealing with people without consciences."

One of Mendelsohn's employees, Robert Jordan, 72, said he sat outside the shop and watched as looters--many of them dressed like gang members--parked trucks outside the back door and loaded up while a liquor store burned next door. Police officers watched from an intersection, Jordan said, but took no action.

About 2:30 a.m., Mendelsohn joined Jordan at the store, handed him a .45-caliber pistol and the two men barged in through the back door, guns blazing. As they intentionally fired into the floor, Jordan said, eight or more looters fled the shop.

Jordan later caught a looter who tried to climb back inside.

"You wouldn't think," Jordan said, "that anything like this could happen in America."

Farther south, workers at the Western Surplus store on Western and Manchester received a call from Los Angeles police within minutes after the verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case, asking that they immediately suspend all gun and ammunition sales, according to a store employee. The store complied.

About 6 p.m., with the streets turning ugly, a handful of youths came in, "told us that trouble had started" and suggested that "it would be in the best interest if we closed and got out," the employee said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The workers locked up and left. By 8 p.m., according to neighborhood sources, members of a Crips gang broke in and kept other looters out until the surplus store was stripped of guns.

Between 700 and 1,700 firearms were taken, according to a store estimate provided to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

"It was a professional job," the employee said.

Looters repeatedly tried to break into another Western Surplus store on Hawthorne Boulevard in Hawthorne but were deterred by Hawthorne police. As other businesses were looted across the street, Hawthorne officers stood guard while Western Surplus employees frantically removed all of the guns.

In North Hollywood, Bob Kahn, co-owner of B & B gun shop, said he was faced with unrest of a different sort on the second day of rioting. More than 100 customers were inside the shop when Kahn announced that Mayor Tom Bradley had imposed a temporary ban on the sale of ammunition, which remains in effect citywide.

"We almost had a riot," Kahn said. Dozens of his customers, he said, promptly drove to Orange County, where there were no restrictions on ammunition sales.

Despite a California law that imposes a 15-day waiting period on most gun purchases, Kahn said some of his customers were able to buy high-powered rifles they could take immediately.

The waiting period is intended to give state officials time to check arrest records and prevent criminals from buying guns. The wait does not apply to the sale of rifles and shotguns at least 50 years old, which are deemed curios and relics.

During the height of the riots, Kahn sold military surplus rifles from World War II.

"People will buy anything because they're frightened," Kahn said. "They're not going to be caught defenseless again."

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-08-17-me-5096-story.html

Going Great Guns : Security: The L.A. riots trigger a firearms-buying spree in the county. First-time owners drive the boom in sales.

By RON SOBLE
AUG. 17, 199212 AM
TIMES STAFF WRITER

More than three months after the Los Angeles riots, residents of Ventura County are continuing to buy more guns and ammunition than at any time in the recent memory of gun-shop owners.

"The calls I get tell me people still want to own a gun, and they are very worried about another riot situation developing," said Fred Romero, the Simi Valley-based Southern California director for the National Rifle Assn.

"They just don't want to be caught off guard or unprotected."

Handguns, rifles, shotguns and cases of ammunition still are being purchased in record numbers from Thousand Oaks to Oxnard, according to gun-shop owners. And, they add, first-time gun owners are fueling much of the boom in sales.

"Most of the people who are buying guns are from the middle class, who are terrified that the have-nots are going to take what they have away from them," said Judy Cotter, owner of Hilldale Sales Inc., a large Simi Valley gun shop.

Recalling the long consumer lines in her shop after rioting broke out in Los Angeles in late April, Cotter said, "Half the people who bought weapons were first-time buyers. One woman had this Dirty Harry image and wanted a weapon that would blow away an elephant."

The initial wave, she recalled, included a Los Angeles Police Department officer still wearing a flak jacket. He rushed in and bought several rounds of ammunition, "throwing the bullets in a box."

But for the most part, the customers who queued up while Los Angeles burned, paying several hundred dollars for armed protection, were "wearing suits and ties and were quiet," Cotter said.

"They were saying, 'God, do you really think (the rioters) are going to come out here?' "

Part of the rush for weapons was caused by police inability to initially control the riot, said her husband, Steve Cotter, who waits on customers with a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson stuffed into his holster.

That spawned a public perception that "if the police can't handle it, we'll handle it ourselves," he said.

Such emotions even motivate liberal advocates of gun control to buy a weapon for the first time, he believes.

"There are no atheists in foxholes; there are no liberals in riots," he said.

Still, purchasing a gun is not like buying an appliance, warned Roy K. Craik, whose firearms store, C Crest Arms, is near the Simi Valley courthouse where the April 29 decision in the Rodney G. King beating trial touched off the rioting.

"I tell people that deadly force is something you can't take back," Craik said. "Are you willing to kill someone and live with it for the rest of your life?"

So far, there are mixed reports from authorities over whether the increase of guns in the general population is complicating life for law-enforcement officials.

Debbie Ruud, a crime analyst for the Simi Valley Police Department, said weapons violations have been dropping this year in her jurisdiction despite the riot.

Ventura County Assistant Sheriff Oscar Fuller said his agency has seen no significant increase in assaults with firearms or incidents involving concealed weapons since the L. A. disturbance.

But David Keith, senior crime analyst for the Oxnard Police Department, said weapons violations have gone up in Oxnard since the rioting.

"There's been an increase in gun situations, in concealed weapons," he said.

Keith, who also manages Oxnard's crime prevention program, said he is apprehensive about all of the guns being bought by the public.

"The majority of people won't learn how to use them," he said.

Tracking the number of guns in public hands is the job of the California attorney general's firearms unit.

Under a law that took effect in 1975 for handguns and in 1991 for rifles and shotguns, California residents must wait 15 days before they can take possession of a firearm.

In the case of handguns--but not rifles or shotguns, whose paperwork is destroyed by the government shortly after it is received--this gives the firearms unit time to review a person's background and to record data.

According to the attorney general's figures, gun sales this year in Ventura County were proceeding at a fairly normal pace until the Los Angeles riots.

In April, 251 handguns were sold in the county, according to the data. Then came the horror of the riots. Suddenly, in May, Ventura County handgun sales jumped to 872, the figures show.

One of those handguns was bought by Jackie Simpson, 29, of Simi Valley, who had never owned a gun in her life.

"I saw all that looting going on on television," said Simpson, Simi Valley branch manager for State Mortgage, a real-estate finance company.

"Then I heard people saying, 'We'll burn Simi Valley!' I was really frightened. So I looked in the Yellow Pages, and Crest was closest to my house."

Hardly had the Los Angeles fires been quelled when Simpson took her place in line at Craik's firearms shop.

Simpson, a single female who shares a townhouse with her mother, recalled that she was the only woman in line. She was still upset by the bloody images that she had seen on TV, and a multitude of thoughts raced through her head.

"What am I doing here? Why am I doing this? Because I don't want to die. Because I live with my mother. If someone's breaking into my home, I'm not big enough to push a knife into someone's body."

Finally, her turn came at the counter. She thought a lightweight, .22-caliber pistol would do the job.

"I want a gun that will kill somebody," she remembers telling the salesman.

"He said, 'No, you want a weapon that will stop somebody as big as him,' " the salesman said, pointing to a beefy clerk. "And I said yes."

" 'Then you don't want a .22,' " Simpson said the salesman declared. " 'A big man like that, it's not going to stop him.' "

Simpson wound up plunking down $260 for a .38-caliber Brazilian-made Taurus revolver.

Then, she said, she had to wait "an agonizing two weeks" before she could pick the revolver up, because of the mandatory waiting period.

Simpson wasn't alone in being unaware of the 15-day waiting period, designed to regulate and control handgun sales. Gun-shop owners said dozens of would-be buyers were outraged that they would have to wait two weeks before taking charge of their weapon.

"People felt this was one of the most outlandish barriers to their constitutional freedom," said Romero of the NRA, which vigorously opposes the handgun waiting period.

On top of the waiting period was an emergency order issued by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley on April 30, which banned ammunition sales in Los Angeles until May 20.

As a result, a flood of L. A. County residents streamed to Ventura County to load up.

"They were coming up from Beverly Hills," recalled Tony Montemorra, who runs the Sportsmen's Exchange in Oxnard, another large gun shop.

"There were a lot of new shooters, a lot of Malibu customers who would rather drive up here than buy in L. A." he said.

And, he added, "more and more ladies were showing up" to buy guns and ammo.

One of those women, Jackie Simpson, got an education in how to handle her new weapon in advance of taking possession.

She said she spent $95 for a day of instruction at a Long Beach shooting range under the tutelage of Paxton Quigley, a gun-control advocate turned arms instructor and author of the 1990 book, "Armed & Female."

"I learned to shoot while lying on my back, like if you're laying in bed at night and someone comes through your door," Simpson said.

It wasn't long before she was back at the C Crest gun counter.

Simpson purchased a 9-millimeter, Austrian-made Glock handgun; a two-shot Derringer, and another .38-caliber Taurus for her mother.

"I can sleep at night now," she said.

Handgun Sales In Ventura County, 1992 January: 456 February: 427 March: 442 April: 251 (Los Angeles riots, April 29) May: 872 *

Top 12 California counties, 1991 Los Angeles: 74,625 Orange: 26,875 San Diego: 19,741 Alameda: 13,706 San Bernardino: 10,859 Riverside: 8,652 Sacramento: 8,606 Fresno: 7,082 Santa Clara: 7,071 San Joaquin: 6,054 Kern: 4,684 VENTURA: 4,334 Source: California Department of Justice

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/28/business/the-executive-life-post-riot-la-s-gun-toting-liberals.html

The Executive Life; Post-Riot L.A.'s Gun-Toting Liberals

By Anne Thompson
June 28, 1992

For many Hollywood executives weighing the post-riot world of L.A., guns have suddenly become more than the controversial centerpieces of some of their blockbuster films. Strong defenders of big-screen violence are now pondering how to defend themselves against the real kind.

Many entertainment executives, not unlike other Californians, have been buying guns. And those who don't own them have been consulting those who do.

"During the riots, my shotgun became a desired commodity," said James Jacks, a production executive ("The Dark Man") who grew up in a military family, hunted as a kid and bought the gun when he moved into a house north of Sunset Strip several years ago. "A couple of friends asked if I'd come over and help if they got in trouble. People all of a sudden felt naked. Liberals with shotguns: a funny image. They're all embarrassed by their fear."

Mr. Jacks said that after the riots he bought a rifle for a woman friend and a shotgun for his partner, Sean Daniel ("American Me"). Mr. Daniel won't admit to "owning" the gun until he has it in his possession, and he won't have it in the house until he knows how to use it.

A talent agent said, on the condition he not be named, that he purchased a "little pistol" the first day of the riots and borrowed another from a friend until his was delivered after the 15-day waiting period. "Many of my knee-jerk liberal friends have felt uncomfortable enough to buy a weapon," he said.

Another agent was willing to describe his pistol collection -- which includes a .357 Colt Python and a "James Bond" Walther PPK -- only if he wasn't identified. "Owning guns has a political connotation slightly to the right of John Birch," he said.

Observes Anne Friedberg, a University of California film professor: "Many Hollywood people have public politics that are liberal pacifist and personal politics that are protectionist. It's shocking how many people in the film community own guns."

Deep in the basement of a nondescript Beverly Boulevard office building, the Beverly Hills Gun Shop is doing two-thirds more business since the riots at the end of April.

"The phone is ringing continuously," reports owner George Waite. "There's a whole new different type of customer. Before, it was more gun collectors, people who were really into firearms." Now, he said, customers are coming from more affluent areas. "We have no sign; we're very discreet. The executives walk in with their attaches and walk out again."


Last week, Mr. Waite said, he made a special house call to the Reagan ranch to deliver a gift to the ex-President, an "old-Western-style" Colt .45.

Writer and director John Milius ("Red Dawn"), a known gun enthusiast, says he has received "lots of calls" for advice since the riots. "They usually want something they saw in a movie, like an Uzi," he says. "The gun of choice for yuppies right now is a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. They hold 12 to 14 bullets, which helps if you can't hit anything." But, he adds, "I never recommend it; 99.9 percent of these people will never learn how to handle a gun properly."

That's what worries Mr. Waite. "After 'Die Hard' and 'Lethal Weapon' opened," he says, "the gun shop was hopping with people wanting to buy the Beretta 92 F," a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol that shoots 16 times. "I believe in gun education. But I can't force my customers to read books or take classes."

Mr. Waite isn't taking any chances where his 4-year-old daughter is concerned: He won't have guns in the house. But for the neophyte wanting to buy a firearm for protection -- and able to afford the $260 to $490 price tag -- he recommends a Smith & Wesson model 640 revolver. "It takes a definite action to make it fire," he explained.

Mr. Milius favors large, always-loaded weapons that call out their danger. "I recommend a large-frame revolver, a .44 Special or .45 Long Colt," he said. "The bigger it is, the safer it is."

The best way to learn to use a gun, Mr. Milius said, is to take up his favorite sport, shooting clay targets. He said he enjoys improving his shooting average at Moore & Moore's Sporting Clays with his pals Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Spielberg and Bob Zemeckis, all of whom, he said, use variations of the 12-gauge over-under shotgun.

Business is up 40 percent at the Beverly Hills Gun Club since the riots, and target practice at the club's indoor pistol range appears to be the latest Hollywood sport of choice, according to manager Owen Smet. "We've had a significant increase in the number of training civilians and security guards," he said.


"Americans have always loved guns," said Jon Weiner, a professor of history at the University of California. "It's a fairly recent idea that guns aren't a good thing. The image of the lone man defending his homestead, standing in the doorway armed to the teeth, is deeply embedded in the American psyche, which means the Hollywood psyche."

Mr. Jacks, the production executive, insists: "This isn't about macho. Nobody's trying to be Rambo. You just don't want somebody to have the power of life and death over you."

His partner, Mr. Daniel, concurs. "The idea that you may be on your own is what occurred to everyone," he said. "This city can turn dangerous for all of us really quickly. You have to assume in L.A. today that you are in a heavily armed environment. I don't think that realization is a question of your political bent."

Correction: July 5, 1992

The Executive Life column last Sunday referred incorrectly to a professor of history. He is Jon Wiener of the University of California at Irvine.