The Los Angeles City Council is poised today to ban the possession of high-capacity gun magazines in the wake of several mass
shootings across the country in which victims were killed or injured by guns that can quickly fire off several bullets at once without the gunmen needing to reload.
Councilman Paul Krekorian, who pushed for the ban, will join advocates for restricting gun use, victims of gun violence and others at a City Hall rally tomorrow morning, prior to the City Council voting on the proposed law.
The ordinance before the City Council would prohibit possession of
magazines with more than 10 rounds. If the law is ultimately approved, anyone already possessing such magazines would need to remove them from the city, give them up to the Los Angeles Police Department to be destroyed, or sell or transfer the magazines according to state law.
Many of the recent high-profile shootings, especially those with high death and injury counts, have involved guns that use firearms with large- capacity magazines, a Krekorian aide said.
The planned vote comes after a recent effort by Krekorian to take the issue to the full council. Krekorian, a former chair who no longer sits on the committee, contended the issue had languished in committee for the past two years.
Krekorian had threatened to exercise a rarely used rule to try to force the issue out of the committee, but the panel’s chair, Mitchell Englander, has since agreed to waive consideration of the ordinance, Thompson said.
Krekorian had also wanted another “gun safety” — requiring guns kept at home to be stored away in a locked container — also to be taken out of committee, but it will now go first to the Public Safety Committee with a clarification, according to Thompson.
The ordinance received some pushback from members of the Los Angeles police union who recently asked for amendments to exempt reserve or retired law enforcement officials from the proposed law.
Revisions are now being proposed to give leeway to some who carry guns on their person, mirroring language used in Sunnyvale, rather than San Francisco, which had been the initial model for the law, Thompson said.
Gun control groups say the gun storage measure is needed to ensure that children do not easily get access to dangerous firearms.
