Practically leaping out of his smart loafers with excitement at a downtown press conference this morning over yesterday’s record gun buyback, Mayor Villaraigosa was in such a hurry to reach LAPD headquarters with his written-down messages that he did not quite finish dressing wherever he most recently had been.
Unlike his formally attired fellow City Hall’ers, the final-term mayor showed up in an open-throated chocolate chip sweater with a turned-up collar, more appropriate for evening lounging at a girlfriend’s home than at a 9:30 meet with the media hordes.
Surrounded by the moustachioed Police Chief Charlie Beck, the new brown-suited District Attorney, (she is new, not the clothes), Jackie Lacey, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, Mayor Villaraigosa plunged with the youthful verve of a deep sea diver into the swirling13-day-old national craze for instant, binding gun control.
With an eye on the prevailing culture in Los Angeles and its penchant for celebrating New Year’s Eve with the crack of a gun, he liberally peppered and salted his boundless jubilation with warnings that firing a gun in this manner is a felony with a guaranteed price tag.
Mr. Trutanich all but guaranteed such offenders would be ordered to subtract six months from their lives and invest the time as a guest of the city.
Eschewing context, the mayor exulted in reporting that when the annual gun buyback, usually Mother’s Day weekend, was moved up five months to yesterday at the Sports Arena and the Masonic Temple in Van Nuys, an all-time high of 2,037 weapons were turned in.
As Mr. Villaraigosa tells it, boy, were they glad to unload these burdens for their now-cleansed consciences.
Painstakingly, like a rookie fisherman, he enumerated his, or the city’s, juicy catch:
• 901 handguns.
• 698 rifles.
• 363 shotguns.
• 75 assault weapons.
What a haul, he kept saying. Isn’t it wonderful that City Hall helped these guilty persons purify their souls?
He was a man in a hurry because, he said, the people are in a hurry and he is their leader.
“People don’t want to wait for the Legislature or the Congress to act,” he said. They want change now, although he did not exactly say what that meant.
The press conference wound on for more than half an hour, and all of the above-named personalities made a (not groundbreaking) contribution – this was the mayor’s show. He did 87 percent of the talking.
Ignoring the fact that 601,000 guns were bought last year in California, largely in the Los Angeles area, Mr. Villaraigosa insisted that the dwarfed 2,037 arms turned in – for rewards – virtually reversed the direction of the oceans.
“I feel safer now,” the mayor said.
He seasoned his emotional salad with a selection of numbers:
• “Seventy-four percent of the people who turned in weapons said now they feel safer.”
• “These gun owners seized the opportunity to prevent the next unnecessary shooting.”
• While most of the gun owners were promised and received gift certificates, from Ralphs and elsewhere, valued at $100 to $200, “a hundred and sixty-six people refused to accept any reward.”
(Even though Christmas and the seven days of Kwanzaa are at hand, not all of the erstwhile gun owners were in a munificent frame of mind yesterday. Most of them wanted a reward. Mr. Villaraigosa admitted that gift certificates became so scarce that City Controller Wendy Greuel had to find a spare $15,000 to sort of underwrite the rear end of the buyback.)
• “In the last seven years, violent crime is down 40 percent, homicides are down 41 percent, and these buybacks can take some of the credit.”
As he inspected the caches of guns lying on two tables at his flanks, Mr. Villarigosa said several times that since people don’t “need” such weapons, he did not see a reason for them to own such threats to lives.
No one spoke up for America and reminded the excitable that this is a free, democratic country.
