New Assault Weapon Ban and How California Guns are getting around them?

There has been an ongoing cat and mouse game between law enforcement agencies, gun makers and gun owners in regards to assault weapon ban in California. The law enforcers struggle to come up with futuristic bans that would make California a safer place for everyone but the gun fanatics are clever enough to either come with hacks that can make the whole ban motor will find loopholes in it that could easily skip them jail time. This happens because most of the time the firearms that come up in the radar of law agencies are the ones that are most popular among gun enthusiasts, like AR-15s, AR-10s or AK-47s assault rifles or other handguns.

Although there are many California approved versions of your favorite firearms like California shotguns, California handguns and California legal rifles, I guess the Californians want to exercise their full right of the Second Amendment. On the other hand, the legislators have their fears stemming from back in the 1980s when a gunman did mass killings in Stockton schoolyard and reportedly fired over a hundred rounds in just a time span of 3 minutes. That is the kind of destruction you can have if assault weapons are not restricted with such bans.

This is just one incident, there are several other grave incidents that followed over the course of a few years making the law enforcers to rethink the need of such dangerous firearms, thus a new assault weapon ban to combat the loopholes. Let’s look in depth at the assault weapon bans over the years and evaluate how effective the California guns are.

Assault Weapon Ban in California

Before going into the details of the ban, I first want you to understand the main motive behind it. The main reason behind every ban imposed on assault weapons is to regulate military style assault weapons and high capacity magazines which allows the gunman to fire a large amount of rounds without having the need to reload.

The ban imposed on assault weapons wants to restrict the sale, transfer, manufacturing and importing of any assault weapon that has a detachable magazine and also has any of the military features like pistol grip, grenade launcher, detachable stock, threaded barrel or folding telescoping. The same goes for the semi automatic pistols, revolvers or any kind of handguns.

The ban also prohibits the general public from acquiring any semi automatic rifle or handgun with a fixed magazine which accepts more than 10 rounds. A fixed magazine should only have a capacity of 10 rounds and not more than that to be legal. Only these rifles for sale in California are legal. The semiautomatic shotguns also shouldn’t have any folding, telescoping or detachable stock. It should also have no pistol grip. The California shotguns should not accept more than 5 rounds with a fixed magazine and a detachable magazine for shotguns is fully prohibited. Moreover no forward grip, rocket launcher, grenade launcher or revolving cylinder shotguns are allowed.

If you lawfully possess any of the weapons before the ban was imposed you can keep it. All the assault weapons that have a manual action are legal as well as all assault weapons used by law enforcers, retired law enforcement agents and police and military are legal. In order to possess any of the assault weapons you need to go through a thorough background check as well as ensuring that no convicted person gets their hands on any of the firearms.

How California Guns are reshaping themselves to fit in?

As I mentioned earlier, the gun owners, gun lovers and law enforcement agencies are all playing a cat and mouse game with each other. When a ban is imposed on the assault rifles the gun manufacturers are quick to find a solution that is acceptable in the books of law but doesn’t make much difference to neither the appearance nor the functionality of the firearms.

A few examples of how California guns have adapted to the bans are as follows- the flash suppressor is banned in assault weapons but a muzzle brake isn’t. Both of these are added on the end of the barrel and the muzzle brake can be a substitute for a flash suppressor. A pistol grip is also banned in California shotguns and rifles for sale in California as it allows the thumb to wrap around the grip but the manufacturers were quick to replace it with a fin-grip which is totally allowed. Bullet button is allowed the reloading of the magazine much swiftly which was a major concern for the authorities so it was banned in 2006 but the solution for it was a partial disassembly of the firearms which means that although the time for reloading is not that quick it’s also not so slow as well. 

Conclusion

Assault rifles are one of the most favorite and purchased firearms around the globe as they are multi-functional. With the bans imposed on them it’s difficult to have them at their best but thanks to the gun lovers we do get the next best form of them available in California.