PARKS BACKS TAX CREDITS FOR TURNING IN BANNED GUNS.

Byline: Beth Barrett Staff Writer

Police Chief Bernard C. Parks told the Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday that he will push for federal income-tax credits for people who turn in banned assault weapons and other firearms.

While acknowledging that a tax credit program could be costly, Parks said it could save millions of dollars in health care for gunshot victims.

``It just depends on where you want to put the dollars - in prevention or in repairing the broken bodies of those who have been shot,'' he said.

Parks told police commissioners that previous efforts offering cash for weapons have been ineffective as well as costly, because the department has had to pay too much for inferior guns.

Further, cash transactions could end up financing the purchase of even more powerful guns, police officials said.

A compensation program is part of assault weapon legislation now being drafted by Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Her spokesman Howard Gantman said the tax credit is being reviewed as one possible incentive.

``It's an interesting idea and our office is taking a good look at it,'' Gantman said. ``However, it probably would need to be put in place with a number of other compensation plans, which could include buybacks. For one thing, some people don't pay enough in taxes to really need the credits.''

Feinstein's legislation, to be introduced next month, would ban both the sale and possession of assault weapons.

Parks said criminals or others who might not file tax returns nor be inclined to turn in banned weapons in response to other incentives would then be subject to prosecution through the criminal justice system.

Parks, however, dismissed the idea of running gun ``confiscation missions that involved going into people's homes.''

The tax credit proposal, which Parks said he will encourage Feinstein to adopt, was part of a broad report to the Los Angeles Police Commission on proposals to reduce gun violence.

While violent crime continues to decline in Los Angeles, Parks said the city cannot tolerate incidents like the shooting of five people at a Granada Hills Jewish center and the killing of a Chatsworth postal worker this month by white supremacist Buford O'Neal Furrow Jr., who confessing to the shootings.

Parks also supports a total ban on assault weapons and cheap firearms, a strict review of applicants for concealed weapon permits, regulation of private gun sales, either a complete ban on gun shows or strict regulations, educational requirements for gun purchases, required fingerprinting before a firearm can be pawned, fingerprinting prior to the purchase of ammunition, annual inspections of all gun stores, required gun safety devices, and expansion of efforts to trace guns used in crimes.

The commission expects to consider the report next month.