Posted on 02/28/2006 3:13:23 PM PST by neverdem
Upcoming weekend show could be last
GLENDALE - The city could follow Los Angeles County's lead by outlawing gun sales on municipal property, a move that would make this weekend's Civic Auditorium gun show the last of its kind in Glendale. The Glendale Gun Show has been held at the Glendale Civic Auditorium for the past 15 years. Its operator has four shows scheduled at the auditorium this year, including the one planned for this weekend.
The auditorium is across the street from Glendale Community College.
"We are one of the safest cities, it's not the crime that really concerns me," said Mayor Rafi Manoukian, who has proposed the ban.
"But ... having a gun show at city facility across the street from the community college just sends the wrong message to the youth and our community, (and) communities around Glendale as well."
The county Board of Supervisors banned gun shows at its Fairplex in 1999, after a white supremacist went on a shooting rampage at a Granada Hills Jewish community center and killed a mail carrier. Investigators learned the shooter bought at least one of his guns at a gun show.
The city attorney has reported to the council that the courts have ruled in favor of local governments, including Los Angeles County, upholding bans on the possession or sale of firearms on public property.
But Chuck Michel, an attorney for the California Rifle and Pistol Association, said legal questions remain unsettled.
"This is an ill-conceived policy and it's also illegal, and all it's going to buy Glendale is a lawsuit," Michel said.
Guns shows are "heavily regulated and heavily policed, so I don't know where they got this idea to do this," he added.
Gun buyers attending this weekend's show at the Civic Auditorium will find more than 200 tables. Past shows have featured everything from antique guns and World War II memorabilia to semiautomatic weapons.
Buyers will need to go through a 10-day waiting period to get a gun.
Buyers at the show come from Glendale and surrounding cities, with a few coming from Simi Valley and further afield, said Steve Friesen, the show's operator.
"I mean these are people from all walks of life," Friesen said. "These are people coming in with their families and their wives and their kids."
In the 1970s and 1980s, Glendale police chiefs blocked gun shows in the city, Manoukian said. But now the matter is for the City Council to decide.
"They can have a gun show at a private facility," Manoukian said. "We're not banning gun shows, we're just banning gun shows at public facilities."
The ordinance would also ban gun possession on city property, with exceptions for law enforcement, movie shoots and other cases.
If the ordinance is approved, this weekend's gun show would be the last one held in Glendale. The four shows held last year at the auditorium generated about $58,000 for the city.
Alex Dobuzinskis, (818) 546-3304
alex.dobuzinskis@dailynews.com
IF YOU GO
The Glendale City Council will meet at 6 tonight at City Hall, 613 E. Broadway.
"They can have a gun show at a private facility," Manoukian said. "We're not banning gun shows, we're just banning gun shows at public facilities."
In the corporate world, this is called project creep..no, they can't have shows at public facilities, but as long as that ban is in effect, why can't we ban them at private facilities..step one (no public facilities) invariably leads to step two (no private facilities either)..
Now your shows are as much beef jerky and t-shirts as guns.
In fact, at the last show I attended at the Cow Palace in San Fran, there was more junk than guns.
By contrast, I attended a show in Tulsa, OK, this last weekend. There were over 2000 tables. Machine guns. Silenced weapons. Hi capacity magazines.
It was beautiful!
Yeah heaven forbid those college kids get to thinking we live in a free country where a person can decide for himself how he will lead his life.
We need morons like this guy to make those hard choices for us.
"But ... having a gun show at city facility across the street from the community college just sends the wrong message to the youth and our community, (and) communities around Glendale as well."
It tells them people are free to exercise their Constitutional rights. I guess that's the wrong message in Cali.
In 1994 I registered 120 new Republican voters at that show.
Just another facet of a Blue State Mentality
IOW,only the really important pretty people or those who can buy themselves a pass...
Just guessing here but could be cheaper sales taxes outside the city anyway.
They are banning freedom.
bump!
There is a terrible irony in this story. Glendale has a large population of Armenians; The Mayor's name hints that he is of Armenian descent.
Less than 100 years ago Armenians in their homelands stood in dire need of armed defense. They were subjected to massacres, forced deportations, starvation, and expropriation of possessions and property.
What gall; what naivete; what ignorance it takes for one of their own to help lead a people down the path to disarmament, whose immediate ancestors were the victims of genocide.
Lest we forget:
Soviet Union, Stalin's regime (1924-53): 20 000 000
There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to the number who died at Stalin's hands. There's the "Why doesn't anyone realize that communism is the absolutely worst thing ever to hit the human race, without exception, even worse than both world wars, the slave trade and bubonic plague all put together?" school, and there's the "Come on, stop exaggerating.
The truth is horrifying enough without you pulling numbers out of thin air" school. The two schools are generally associated with the right and left wings of the political spectrum, and they often accuse each other of being blinded by prejudice, stubbornly refusing to admit the truth, and maybe even having a hidden agenda. Also, both sides claim that recent access to former Soviet archives has proven that their side is right.
Here are a few illustrative estimates from the Big Numbers school:
Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993 cites these:
Rummel, 1990: 61,911,000 democides in the USSR 1917-87, of which 51,755,000 occurred during the Stalin years.
Chistyakovoy, V. (Neva, no.10): 20 million killed during the 1930s.
Dyadkin, I.G. (Demograficheskaya statistika neyestestvennoy smertnosti v SSSR 1918-1956 ): 56 to 62 million "unnatural deaths" for the USSR overall, with 34 to 49 million under Stalin.
Gold, John.: 50-60 million.
Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998): c. 50 million killed 1924-53, excluding WW2 war losses. This would divide (more or less) into 33M pre-war and 17M after 1939.
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm
Oh, brother!
"Hi capacity magazines."
I bought 2 for my Glock this past weekend in MS. It was a good show, too. Lots of families there. That probably chaps Cali as well.
"By contrast, I attended a show in Tulsa, OK, this last weekend. There were over 2000 tables. Machine guns. Silenced weapons. Hi capacity magazines."
Here in Denver the gun shows are a joke. They have shrunk in size and conatin mostly junk.
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