Private Gun Buyers Ignoring Sales Law : Registration: Survey finds that 15-day waiting period before rifles and shotguns change hands is being ignored. Many shop owners say rule is unenforceable.

SACRAMENTO —  Gun owners who buy, sell and trade rifles and shotguns among themselves apparently are not complying with a new California law--either deliberately or out of ignorance--that requires a 15-day wait before the firearms can change hands.

Thousands of gun purchases made from stores and dealers since Jan. 1 have been routinely subjected to the delay to allow for authorities to check backgrounds of buyers. Only 19 private transactions have been reported to the state.

Although no records have been kept, firearms dealers throughout the state, gun owner organizations and state regulators agree that normally thousands of sporting arms are privately exchanged each year, a tradition stretching back to California’s Old West era.

In interviews, they said there is no reason to believe private transfers suddenly stopped Jan. 1, when exchanges of rifles and shotguns among individuals became subject to the 15-day waiting period.

Failure to comply with the private sale law can bring a misdemeanor fine or county jail term for the first violation. Subsequent violations can be prosecuted as felonies that carry stiff state prison sentences.

“The public is ignoring that law 100%,” said Stirling Fligge of Orangevale, who owns one of the biggest gun stores in Northern California. “There is tremendous resentment that the government has made it very difficult for a normal sale between law-abiding parties.”

Fligge reflected the viewpoint of most licensed gun dealers throughout the state interviewed by The Times. Under the new law, transactions must go through licensed dealers who keep possession of the firearms while the state completes background checks.

Selected at random, none of the dozen dealers contacted reported handling a private sale. Without exception, they termed the private transfer law unenforceable.

Some said they believed that the regulations had gone virtually unnoticed by many firearms owners because they were a little-publicized part of a much broader gun control bill.

“I don’t think there has been enough thought given to this by individuals to be massive civil disobedience,” said Peter Schori, a vice president of Turner’s Outdoorsman, a major Southern California gun store chain. “It hasn’t got a lot of attention by the media. I think most people are still going by the way things have been done all their lives.”

The regulation of private rifle and shotgun sales was a key provision of a far-reaching gun control law by Assemblyman Lloyd G. Connelly (D-Sacramento) that was enacted by the Legislature last year over the stiff opposition of the National Rifle Assn. and other gun owner organizations.

Essentially, the new law extended to long guns the 15-day delay required for years in California for handgun purchases. While a prospective purchaser waits to take possession of the firearm, the state Department of Justice performs background checks to determine if the buyer’s history is free of criminal activity and mental instability.

The reporting of private transfers of revolvers and pistols has been the law for years, but is largely ignored and considered virtually unenforceable.

The intent of the new law is to put all sales of firearms beyond the reach of criminals and the mentally unstable. Advocates also argue that the law establishes a “cooling-off” period that may prevent “heat of passion” shootings.

Before Jan. 1, virtually any adult could acquire long guns over the counter with no questions asked.

The new statute chiefly affects sales by dealers. The dealers are also held responsible for overseeing and handling paperwork required for private transfers among individuals.

Dealers must complete the transfer documents and send them to Department of Justice regulators listing, among other things, the names and addresses of the private sellers and whether they admit to having a criminal record, abusing drugs or having been mentally unstable.

The dealers hold the firearms for 15 days and turn them over to the new owners if they pass background checks. For the effort, the dealers charge a $7.50 fee that is levied by the state and may impose additional charges for costs such as storing the guns and buying additional liability insurance.

While only 19 private sales have been reported since Jan. 1, dealers have reported their own sales at 3,697, which is about what the Department of Justice anticipated, said Shelley Rife, a firearms supervisor. Rife said background investigations resulted in rejections of 22 sales of long guns.

Some dealers speculated that because they are so much cheaper, four or five times as many used guns are privately transferred as are sold new at retail. Presumably, little if any sales tax is collected on used gun transactions, which often occur among friends, acquaintances and extended family members.

Under the new statute, virtually the only transfers not subject to a 15-day wait and background check are those involving family members of the same bloodline.

“Selling a shotgun to your wife or her brother (without going through a dealer) is against the law,” said H.L Richardson, founder of Gun Owners of California. “If somebody is going to sell a gun to his buddy, he is not going to pay any attention to it. It’s another stupid law.”

Kati Corsaut, a spokeswoman for Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, turned aside questions about why more private sales had not been reported. “We don’t want to speculate until we look at the numbers in a few more weeks and look at the whole issue,” she said.

The issue of private sales was the second involving guns to confront Lungren in only a few days. Earlier, he proposed urgent legislation to give owners of assault weapons more time to register them. Only a handful of the estimated 300,000 such guns were registered by the Dec. 31 deadline.

Connelly said he expected a slow start and suggested that for private transactions it “may take even five years for people to fully adjust. . . . We knew it was going to be a problem. There will be some glitches, of course. But we’ll get overall compliance.”

Meantime, a few gun dealers said they have no intention of handling the paperwork for private transactions. A San Francisco dealer said she did not “need the hassle.”

Bob Kahn of B & B Sales, the biggest firearms dealer in the state, said he is also declining to be a go-between in private exchanges of guns except on a 30-day consignment basis. He called the law “hogwash . . . and an imposition. . . . You are depriving people of rights they should normally have.”