Sunnyvale’s ammo magazine ban is in effect — but to what effect?

SUNNYVALE — Leonard Fyock is quick to tell you he’s no outlaw — even when he believes the law is flawed.

“I’ve lived here in Sunnyvale for more than 40 years and I’ve never had so much as a parking ticket,” the 67-year-old said.

But this week, Sunnyvale joined a small number of cities and states that can lock up gun owners like Fyock unless they give up something from their gun chests — magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Sunnyvale’s gun-control measure, which 67 percent of voters approved in November, so far has survived a series of legal challenges seeking to keep it from taking effect. As of midnight Thursday, anyone who possessed a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds was committing a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000, six months in jail or both.

Sunnyvale police say nobody has showed up at the city’s Department of Public Safety to turn over their magazines. Owners had the choice of allowing police to destroy the magazines, sell them out of state or to a licensed gun dealer, or move them out of town. Fyock, a plaintiff in the National Rifle Association lawsuit challenging the law, chose the latter.

“I just thought, ‘Well, this doesn’t look good,'” he said Wednesday, a few hours before the ban took effect. “So my high-capacity magazines are already out of town.”

Fyock said he needs the larger magazines for self-defense and still hopes “somewhere down the line this will get overturned.”

State law has banned making, selling, giving and lending magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds since 2000. Those who owned them before then were allowed to keep them, but Sunnyvale’s Measure C went a step further by banning possession no matter when they were acquired. Owners had until Thursday to comply.

City spokeswoman Jennifer Garnett dismissed the possibility that many owners are simply ignoring the new ordinance.

“The magazines have a value so it’s not surprising at all that people would consider alternatives like selling them versus turning them in to Public Safety,” she said, adding it’s not too late for people to turn the magazines in if they so choose. “Barring any unusual circumstances, we wouldn’t cite people for voluntarily turning in their large capacity magazines to Public Safety even though it is legally possible at this time to cite them.”

San Francisco approved a similar ban last year, but San Francisco police Sgt. Eric O’Neal said his department has no system to track whether any magazines have been turned in for destruction under the new ordinance.

Fyock said he knows of other Sunnyvale residents who own such magazines but doesn’t know how or whether they’ve complied with the new law.

“I imagine they’ll move them out of town as soon as they can,” he said.

Other magazine owners in Sunnyvale won’t talk to reporters about the ban even on condition of anonymity because they distrust the media, said one Measure C opponent — who himself wouldn’t speak on the record.

Chuck Michel, the NRA’s West Coast counsel representing Fyock and several other plaintiffs in their lawsuit against the city, said most people won’t speak out for fear that police will track them down.

A federal judge in San Jose refused Wednesday to grant a preliminary injunction blocking the law from taking effect, finding the plantiffs’ case isn’t likely to succeed at trial, the ban wouldn’t cause them irreparable harm and Sunnyvale has a public interest in enforcing the ban.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also refused to stay the law Thursday, so Michel made a last-ditch plea Friday to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The San Francisco law firm of Farella Braun + Martel is representing the city for free to defend Measure C against all challenges. Former Mayor Tony Spitaleri, the driving force behind Measure C, is convinced Sunnyvale will prevail and hopes other cities will follow its lead in “a slow tsunami” of measures to reduce the risk of gun accidents and crime.

Sitting outside a cafe Thursday watching lunchtime crowds throng to restaurants on sun-dappled Murphy Avenue, Spitaleri mused aloud about what someone could do there with a rifle and several 30-round magazines like those that Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children and six educators in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — the rampage that inspired him to push Measure C.

He said he would never support any effort to take people’s firearms away, but he also doesn’t believe anyone needs more than 10 shots in a magazine and that larger ones were meant for war, not civilian life.

“It makes no sense to say you can’t purchase it but you can still possess it,” he said.

He added that lawmakers in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., don’t share “the motivations of the people they represent. … If you want something done, you do it from the ground up.”

Spitaleri acknowledges he has never known how many larger magazines were owned in Sunnyvale and that a would-be shooter could easily bring such a magazine from almost anywhere else.

“It doesn’t move the needle — yet,” he said, “but it always starts somewhere.”

Josh Richman covers politics. Contact him at 510-208-6428. Follow him at Twitter.com/josh_richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.