STATE GUN BILL TAKES AIM AT LOCAL MAKERS; VALENCIA FIRM AMONG TARGETS.

Byline: Nita Lelyveld Knight-Ridder Newspapers

They're known as Saturday night specials or junk guns - small, low- and medium-caliber handguns that sell for as little as $50 and fit with barely a bulge inside the pocket of a pair of jeans.

Manufacturers, including a leading one in Valencia, and gun advocates say they provide low-cost self-protection to America's law-abiding, low-income citizens. Law enforcement officials and experts on violence say they're favorite guns of criminals.

A bill just passed by the California Legislature would outlaw the manufacture and sale of these guns in the state. And it sits on the desk of Gov. Pete Wilson, who has yet to say if he will sign it.

His decision will have national implications for a simple reason: A handful of gun manufacturers clustered around Los Angeles produce the vast majority of the nation's supply of these guns, as much as 80 percent of them during one recent year. Critics call the companies the ``Ring of Fire.''

``The impact of the ban would be great not only in California but everywhere,'' said Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency room physician who, as director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, has done extensive research on the companies.

``I don't think the ban itself is going to put an end to the gun violence issue. It can't. Banning the production of these guns doesn't make them nonexistent. But it makes them much harder to find. And that matters a lot in a setting where many other things are being done - like making it harder to get a gun and increasing the penalties for crimes involving guns.''

Opponents of the ban argue that the bill is far too broadly written and will end up outlawing many high-quality small handguns that do not fit the Saturday night special mold. They say the legislation will only make crime more deadly because manufacturers now producing low-caliber, small guns will be forced to switch their efforts to bigger and more powerful weapons.

``We're not going to prevent one criminal from using one gun,'' said Richard Feldman, executive director of the Atlanta-based American Shooting Sports Council, a trade association for the firearms industry. ``We'll just change the lethality of the guns they're using. All we'll do is make the streets of cities like Los Angeles more dangerous, more lethal. The real effect on the citizens of California, if this bill becomes a law, is that there will be people who die - people who may have (been) injured and not died without it.''

Banned under the bill would be the same guns the federal government outlawed for import after Congress passed the 1968 Gun Control Act, which made it illegal to import handguns not suitable for, or easily adaptable to, sporting use. That law was enacted in the aftermath of the assassination in Los Angeles of Robert Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan, who used a small, cheap, imported handgun. At that time, few such handguns were made in the United States.

``It's pretty much a no-brainer because Congress has prohibited the importation of these kinds of guns for decades,'' said Bill Mabie, chief aide for California state Sen. Richard Polanco, a Los Angeles Democrat who wrote the California legislation. ``Ultimately they're just cheap, poorly made handguns and the manufacturers are the bottom feeders of the gun industry.''

California's gun industry began in the late 1960s, when a man named George Jennings saw the lucrative gap created by the ban on imports and left the aerospace industry to start a gun company called Raven Arms. Over the next decades, a cluster of small gun factories cropped up around Los Angeles.

In many ways, it was a family affair. Jennings' children started their own gun businesses. So did one of his nephews and a high school classmate of his son's.

The six existing ``Ring of Fire'' companies are Sundance Industries of Valencia, Arcadia Machine & Tool of Irwindale, Davis Industries and Lorcin Engineering of Mira Loma, Bryco Arms of Costa Mesa and Phoenix Arms, built out of the now-defunct Raven Arms, in Ontario.

In 1993, these gunmakers produced 892,886 handguns - 39 percent of all handguns made nationwide.

``The criminals, they're not going to become nuclear physicists because they can't get these guns,'' said Randy Herrst, a research assistant for Sundance. ``They're just going to find other guns - and they'll be bigger ones, ones that kill more easily. Gun control like this increases violent crime rather than reducing it.''

Law enforcement agencies say many handguns reach criminals through secondary markets, after they're purchased legally from licensed firearms dealers. Sometimes they're sold on the street. Or criminals make ``straw purchases,'' getting others to make legal purchases for them, much as teen-agers ask adults to buy beer. Often, too, the guns are stolen.

In 1994, seven ``Ring of Fire'' gun models made the Department of Justice's list of top 10 guns most frequently traced in crimes.

In a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms study of 17 cities, released in July, ``Ring of Fire'' guns were the top guns seized in crimes in five cities, the second most frequently seized guns in 10 cities and the third most frequently seized in 12.

Gun advocates sneer at these statistics, saying it's only logical that the handguns produced in the largest numbers would be heavily represented in such lists.

``The guns of choice of America's criminals are simply the first guns they can get their hands on,'' Feldman said.

But the most frequently used argument against the bill is that it would effectively deprive the poor of the right to protect themselves.

``We're talking about working-class people,'' Feldman said. ``What we're saying here in this legislation is that it's OK for rich people to have guns that they can afford, but poor people - and we know they're all criminals - it's just not OK for them.''

Those supporting the bill say the class argument is nonsense, especially since the guns, which lack sophisticated safety devices, sacrifice safety in favor of low cost.

``We don't have automobiles without bumpers or headlights or seat belts although it would certainly make the cars cheaper. We have standards,'' Mabie said. ``And raising the standards is what we're trying to do here.''

More than 30 California cities already have banned the guns. So have five states - Maryland, Minnesota, South Carolina, Illinois and Hawaii. Legislation to ban the guns nationwide also has been introduced in Congress.

Aides for Wilson say he will study the issues carefully before signing a bill that could have such sweeping effects.

``It's a very complex bill,'' said Wilson spokesman Steve Tatum. ``At this point, the governor just hasn't come near a decision. He'll take his time.''