Jeff Chan 
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                   chan@shell.portal.com


March 28, 1994


Editor 
San Francisco Examiner 
Fax: (415) 512-1264


Editor:

Lisa Krieger's 3/27 front page piece on the Roberti recall contains at
least a couple obvious errors of fact.

First, Roberti didn't ban "automatic weapons."  Machine guns have been
essentially unavailable in California since 1934 except to the police
and movie industry.  This deliberate distortion can be traced back to a
March 1989 paper by Josh Sugarman titled "Assault Weapon: Analysis, New
Research and Legislation."  In it Sugarman recommends exploiting:

"...the public's confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus
semi-automatic assault weapons [sic]  --  anything that looks like a
machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun..."

Even the term "assault weapon" is itself newspeak.  The United States
Department of Defense officially classifies an assault rifle as a select
fire rifle (i.e.  one that can fire one round per trigger pull or
multiple rounds  --  a machine gun).  A "semi-automatic assault weapon" is
as much an oxymoron as a manual automatic transmission or a crooked
honest politician.

Krieger's repeated perpetuation of this lie suggests bias and dishonesty
that should call into question the competence and journalistic ability
of both her and her editor.

Second, if by "gun lobby" the Examiner suggests that the NRA is behind
the recall, then it is again in error.  The recall is made possible by
thousands of grass roots citizens from across the country who are
concerned about corruption, victim's rights, taxation, crime control and
firearms rights.  They have independently volunteered to mail some
letters about the recall into Roberti's district.  These concerned
citizens and the 40,000+ voters in Roberti's district who signed the
recall petitions represent more than "the gun lobby".  They represent
voter frustration with a powerful, corrupt, entrenched career
politician.

Sincerely,

[signature]

Jeff Chan