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Sunday, February 9, 2003

Gun laws a minefield for military

By GORDON DILLOW The Orange County Register

As thousands of U.S. military personnel in California deploy to the Persian
Gulf in preparation for war, some of them are having a serious problem.

They can't get guns.

Oh sure, the military provides them with an array of weapons: M-16s, grenade
launchers, squad automatic weapons and so on. They're heavily armed.

But a lot of military types, particularly guys in special-operations units,
like to supplement some of the standard-issue weaponry with privately
purchased handguns and gun-related equipment of their own choosing. Often
the handguns and equipment they can buy in the private market are better and
more advanced than the standard-issue stuff.

But getting those handguns can be a big problem in California, which has
some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. Although law
enforcement personnel are exempted from many of the restrictions on
purchasing firearms, military personnel stationed in California are not -
even if they're on their way to a combat zone.

"It's a sad state of affairs," says Evan Carolyn, a former Marine who owns
Evan's Gunsmithing and Shooter's World in Orange. "There's no way for us to
assist these guys in getting the best stuff they can."

For example, recently some members of a special-operations unit - I'm not
supposed to say which unit - told Evan they wanted to buy some compact
9-millimeter handguns as personal backup weapons before they shipped out.
Unfortunately, there's a 10-day waiting period for firearms purchases in
California - and the unit had to leave before the waiting period was up.

And even if they had bought the handguns, they would have had to make do
with 10-round magazines instead of the 13-round magazines the weapons are
capable of holding. That's because California law bans the sale of "large
capacity" magazines - more than 10 rounds - to anyone but police officers.

"We're seeing this kind of thing all the time," Evan says. "This is how
we're treating the military in California."

Spokesmen for the state Attorney General's Office, which regulates firearms
sales, told me they were aware of the problem involving military personnel
and firearms restrictions - but there's not much they can do about it. Even
if he wanted to, the attorney general can't waive any of the statutory
restrictions on gun sales - not even for guys headed off to war.

And as for the state Legislature amending the gun laws to exempt military
personnel under certain special circumstances - well, don't hold your
breath. After all, they're the same guys who passed these silly, ineffective
laws in the first place.

So that's the situation we have today in California. Apparently we trust our
military personnel to handle tanks, machine guns, missiles, grenades,
mortars, howitzers, aircraft carriers, submarines, jets, bombs and nuclear
weapons. And after making them wait a week-and-a-half, we even trust them
enough to let them buy a handgun that holds ten rounds.

But they'd better not ask for one that holds eleven.