`SMART GUNS' BILL PUSHED IN ASSEMBLY.

Byline: Paul Hefner Daily News Sacramento Bureau

Handguns should be harder for children to fire, easier for parents to keep locked and - ultimately - smart enough to work only for their rightful owners, state lawmakers proposed Monday.

A coalition of Assembly Democrats introduced legislation that would ban the sale of ``junk guns'' in California and push manufacturers to make weapons childproof.

Proponents said cheap, poorly made weapons are used too often by criminals and kids.

``It's time for us to rise up against this plague,'' said Assemblyman Jack Scott, D-Pasadena, whose 27-year-old son was killed in an accidental shooting three years ago.

Scott joined more than a dozen Democrats who announced support for AB 488 proposed by four Assembly Democrats: Louis Caldera and Antonio Villaraigosa, both of Los Angeles; Elaine Alquist of San Jose; and Carl Washington of Compton.

The bill would initially require guns sold in California to meet federal standards imposed on imported weapons. Later, manufacturers would have to add safety features such as trigger locks or increasing trigger resistance.

The bill would also encourage manufacturers to use ``smart gun'' technology, in which a weapon only fires for someone carrying or wearing a tiny radio transponder matched to the gun. Colt Manufacturing Co. already has developed a prototype of such a weapon, proponents of the bill said.

But officials for the National Rifle Association said the weapons targeted by the bill are no less safe than others on the market. Current law requires gun owners to keep weapons away from children, they said.

``What you need is to make the person who uses the gun safer,'' said Steve Helsley, an NRA lobbyist.

Helsley said that imposing federal import standards on U.S.-manufactured guns would not merely restrict low-quality weapons, but also short-barreled revolvers that police have used for decades.

``That's the problem these bills have. They sound good and then you start to apply them to the real world,'' Helsley said.

More than 80 percent of the junk guns sold in the United States are manufactured in Southern California, Caldera said.

But the standards imposed on gun makers are too weak, and the price the country pays from more than 38,000 gun deaths a year is too high, he said.

``This shield from consumer safety requirements has ensured that a steady stream of cheap, poorly made, disposable guns continues to flood our neighborhoods,'' Caldera said.