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	Vol.7, No 34, October 27, 1999
	Gun dealers senselessly targeted  The Long Beach City Council voted earlier this month for an ordinance that would require gun dealers to buy $1 million worth of liability insurance and re-enforce a 7-year-old ban against home gun sales. Mark Blackburn Does Long Beach need so much money that it has the right to drive private business out of the place they work, in this case their home, and then charge them extra for doing business in the city?  Apparently so. The insurance only insulates the city from a lawsuit, it does little to protect the dealers themselves. Whether they work from their home or a public business, as long as they follow procedure, do the required background check and have all their licenses in order, they are almost lawsuit proof.  The $1 million covers the city if it gets sued. City officials can now send people after the dealers. The city itself will not have to carry insurance as long as it can show that someone can pay in case of a problem. The city also wants to re-enforce a 1992 ordinance that bans dealers from selling guns privately from inside their home. Oddly enough, most private dealers who spoke at the council meeting said they have been getting their licensees renewed without a problem for the last seven years.  Long Beach will grant them a three-month grace period before going after them. Plenty of time for the all important Christmas Uzi sale. Where does the city of Long Beach get off regulating what anyone does in his or her home? First, the crack down on the out-of-control yard sales scammers and now this. What's next? Get those people who earn $300 a week stuffing envelopes at home, tax their spit and make them work in strip malls? Granted, private gun sales from the home are on a higher scale of danger then envelope stuffers, but that is why they are regulated so tightly by the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm Bureau (ATF).  Home permits to sell guns are more expensive and monitored more closely then open dealers like Big 5 or Turners Outdoorsman where anyone can by a shotgun with no waiting period. Ask the kids in Columbine, Col. Most reputable home dealers only carry small arms that require a waiting period and are very selective of their clients since they will be allowing these people into their homes. These are not the kind of people selling .38 specials from trenchcoats on some street corner. But now they will be forced by Long Beach to open their client base and spend more money to do business in the city. If Long Beach needs the business license fees so bad, maybe it could re-open the mall in downtown and actually have stores there. Why not turn it into one big gun mall with a waiting period store to handle the background checks, an ammo store, a couple of knife outlets and a hunt-your-own food court.  Maybe be truly radical and ban guns within city limits. Set a few metal detectors around the city limits and check everyone for guns. If you catch them carrying, shoot them down like Wyatt Earp did. Kill a few and the rest will move right out. But maybe that's what Long Beach wants; to drive the dirty little gun freaks out of the city. Then we can focus on other home businesses we can drag into the light and watch them shrivel and die like a vampire in sunlight. I personally hate those Beanie-Babie things. Maybe we could get them next! Discrimination in any form is wrong and these businessmen are being selectively targeted, no pun intended, because they sell a product that some people find distasteful. Cigarettes and alcohol are being slowly taxed into oblivion and soon guns will join that endangered list.  What is truly endangered is a persons right to buy what they want in Long Beach without having to pay a luxury tax to salve the injured conscience of the moral right. The ordinance is for the sake of the City of Long Beach and not the people of Long Beach. The city will save money by forcing others to pay if someone sues, but if the fees are too much, businesses will leave and that costs everyone in freedom; the freedom to sell, the freedom buy, the freedom to do what we want in the confines of our own home, the law and our city.  Maybe we should all exercise our right to move and get out of Long Beach before they come after us next. Mark Blackburn is  the photo editor of the Daily Forty-Niner and a  criminal justice major at Cal State Long Beach.		Happiness found in L.B.   College tuition lowered   Fine Arts buildings to be made over   Overseas scholarship awarded to CSULB student   Crime Log Death is part of war   Gun dealers senselessly targeted Fright Fest   Apollo Four Forty worth import price   Legendary band reunites for new release   Reality film features strong performances   Bizarre comedy film a hit Home schedule ends with defeat   Hockey team clubs its way to existence Fall 99 ISSUES DAILY 49ER HOMEPAGE
Forty-Niner Publications, Department of Journalism, California State University, Long Beach ©1999 All rights reserved.