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I read nothing in this article that indicates a 'crack down' on AR-15 owners.

I'm guessing he's referring to the removal of the bullet button release work-around for the banning of easily swappable magazines.

This will keep the criminals at bay too.

What's the technical difference between a detachable magazine and a clip?

You fill a magazine with rounds, and snap into the rifle, when it's empty you can eject it and replace it (this isn't automatic, you press a button and it releases a latch and either the magazine falls out or it stays kinda stuck on and you pull or knock it off, depends on the make which it does)

A clip is a little strip of metal that bullets "clip" into, you hook this opposite of where a magazine would be and you press a row of bullets clipped onto it down into a built in magazine, these are mostly for older models and can be a bit of a bitch to operate. There are also clips for revolvers called speed loaders.


Magazine in use: http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/1110.jpg


Clip in use: http://www.a-human-right.com/loadinggarand.jpg


Revolver speed loader: http://14544-presscdn-0-64.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/revolver-11.jpg

Thanks, the terms have always seemed interchangeable.

90's gangsta rap really like to flip them, probably because clip has more rhymes and has a good mouth feel. This likely influenced tv and movies of the time.

Including the idea that firing a gun sideways was a smart thing to do.

A clip is what military grade ammunition comes in when packed in bandoleers. With a feeder attachment you can jam ammo from the clip into an AR magazine. With older weapons like the M-1 with an internal non removable magazine you jam in rounds with the clip into the mag. When empty, the clip would twang as it was ejected when the magazine was empty.

Detachable or not, magazines hold rounds in the weapon, the clip are a round packaging and loading system.

Without a clip you just shove in rounds manually by hand into the mag.

What the article is talking about are the mag ejection buttons in california must come with a detent button, within the button so that the mag cannot be just ejected on the fly. You would have to push in the detent with a bullet or a pin then push the mag release to get the mag out. Sure this will slow down the guy at the shooting range, but the nutjob or the career criminal will just swap it out with a 15 buck mag release button without the locking mechanism.

As for the ammo tax, sucks to be them it just expands the black market for ammo for the criminals.

Fuck. Zen fascists totally control SF right now

Aren't the gun laws of neighboring states especially lax?

Depends on what you mean by lax. I live in Oregon, and there are no restrictions on the types of guns you can own. You can have a fully automatic weapon (machine gun), for example, as long as you follow the Federal rules on ownership and transfer.

We are also a "shall issue" state when it comes to concealed carry permits, so as long as you pass a criminal background check and take a short class, you get the permit. More restrictive than some states, but less restrictive than California.

However, Oregon recently passed a change in the law that requires essentially all gun transfers, including those between two private citizens, to go through a licensed gun dealer for a background check. This expanded on an existing restriction on gun shows, where all gun sales have to go through background checks. That is more restrictive than many states.

Overall, while certainly less restrictive than California, I would say that Oregon is not "especially lax", at least by American standards. I am not familiar with the laws in Nevada and Arizona, so they may well be significantly less restrictive.

To follow up I looked at gunlawscorecard.org and they give Oregon a C grade, as compared to California's A-. They give Nevada and Arizona both an F, which seems to indicate your "especially lax" characterization does apply to those states.

It should be noted that taking any guns or ammo into california from one of those states can get you slapped with a folony if you are breaking any californian gun laws. If you bring a gun into the state you have to let the doj know withen 10 days.

Legitimate question. What parts of closing the bullet button loophole, enacting penalties for straw purchases, and banning assault weapons don't you want?

having to register an ar-15 as an assult weapon. The military defines an assult weapon as being able to select fire (full auto or machine gun) an ar-15 is the one pull one shot kind not a "real" assult rifle. I have a buddy out in the sticks of California who has a .50bmg rifle, all .50bmg are ban but his was grandfathered in but he had to register it. The cops call him once a year or so and ask him if they can barrow it. The thing is that he might not get it back if they did. a very soft herasment.
The cheapest magazines for the AR-15 are the 30rd magazines and they are the norm. I personally don't have any because they can only been grandfathered in. But it doesn't take an enginer to make one.
The one that will effect me the most is the ammo one. Reg and taxes on be able to buy ammo. It's going to make it very hard to get the ammo for my grandfathers winchester and cost much much more. I have been paying around .80$ a round. I expect it will be twice that very soon. We don't tax churchs because that would be an infrengment on the rights of people's religin. I totally think that the law makers here want to disarm everyone but the police and thier security. I think that they will nibble away and slowy make that the new normal.

Pretty sure we don't tax churches at the discretion of the church-loving people who write tax law. It isn't in the Constitution, and has nothing to do with freedom of religion.

The AR-15 isn't an assault rifle. It's just a regular semiautomatic rifle based on an assault rifle platform. And it's not possible to convert it without an M16/M4 lower receiver, which already will get you time in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for possession without the tax stamp.

I'm all in favor of restricting gun ownership to responsible owners, with required proof of responsibility (with the caveat, the law should be "shall issue" if the responsibility requirements are met). But banning a certain gun just because it looks like an assault rifle, that's just stupid.

(Proof of responsibility should be like cars: license, registration, and insurance.)

Cars are restricted to people who have a productive use for them, though. Would you be in favour of a gun ban for people who couldn't demonstrate a legitimate use for the gun in question?

It baffles me that Americans will allow states to ban fireworks, but not guns.

Your idea and my idea of "productive use" probably differs wildly. For example, I consider going to the range and wasting ammo at paper targets to be a very productive use, because it's not only good practice, it's goddamned fun.

Yes, guns can be fun.

I used to be a dyed in the wool conservative Republican. Thank you SE, you were one of the things that removed the scales from my eyes. But one of the tiny handful of things I retained, is that I believe gun ownership is a fundamental constitutional right.

I believe that we do have a significant problem with gun-related violence in the United States. I believe that concealed carry is unnecessary and dangerous (despite being a (now-expired, whoops) CCW cardholder myself), and open carry is outright looking for violence. I believe in restricting possession of fully-automatic weapons. I believe that gun owners should be licensed to own by a government entity (proving that they have training in the safe and effective use of weapons and in legal rights and responsibilities of ownership), registration (so that every gun can be traced back to it's rightful owner), and insurance (not only to cover legal and medical liability, but so that insurance companies can dictate forms of storage and transport for coverage). I believe in the state monopoly on violence.

But restrictions on ownership based on use, or outright ban, as in the UK and Australia? No. It's a constitutional right. I have no problem coupling appropriate responsibility to that right, but if those responsibilities are met, then the right shall not be abridged.

That's a reasonable argument for allowing the range to own guns, but it is absolutely not one for letting you keep them in your home.

Remember that you're on the internet here, an international forum. The world kind of laughs at you when you refer to a right to own guns.

Well, it doesn't help that I have no idea where you live. Anonymity is another lauded bu still sometimes annoying aspect if the internet.

Hi, I'm rndmnmbr, and I'm about the only sane man left in Texas.

Hi, I'm foobar from Canada. Our only Islamic terrorist could only get his hands on a bolt action deer rifle, because gun control works.

We should take away the deer rifles.

Of course the Constitutional right to gun ownership is based on a particular interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, which the Supreme Court did affirm in its most recent ruling on the subject, just as they've consistently upheld that reasonable restrictions on ownership don't violate that right.
Your views here are actually very reasonable given the current status quo. Problem here is the most powerful gun rights advocacy group and all the elected officials in their pockets don't agree.

We ban fireworks because they tend to set the flora on fire.

Right, because they're dangerous, but still a lot less dangerous than guns.

From a california state budget stand point fireworks are a lot more. How much money did the fires in LA cost? I'm not saying that should be the deciding factor. I just know money was a factor in the ban of fireworks and rightfully so.

The only reason guns appear to cause less financial damage is that their owners and manufacturers aren't held liable for the damage they cause.

Nope, last wild fire cost us 10s of millions, we only average about 20 deaths in my 789k population city a year. 1/4 of that was guns, and about 3/4 of that was cops putting holes into people. If you are killed here in El Paso chances are it is going to be a traffic accident.

You seem to value human life a bit less than I do.

I don't think most of the cars on the road are needed. I have friends who don't own cars, just rent themevery once in a while. But that is besides the point. Nazis didn't registeer all cars then take them away from the radical Jews. We bitch about the governement invading our privacy and being out of touch with the common man.. fucked up laws making it inpossible to get abortions and health care. We bitch about corps buying washington. Where do you think that is all going? Child labor laws and labor unions weren't voted in. The classic responce is "no one is coming for your guns." that isn't true. They are. Today they are coming for the part that holds the bullits.

Of course it isn't true. I am coming for your guns, and I'll take them away from you at the first opportunity.

Let me distance myself from backSLIDER here.

I'm glad you support gun ownership, and I hope you are a responsible owner - but buddy, you're getting a little off towards the paranoid conspiracy crowd there. The government is not malicious. The government is incompetent. There is a difference.

This ban is happening because of well-meaning lawmakers not thinking this through enough. It's not happening because the Man wants to take your guns.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think everyone who works for the government wants to take our guns or anything. I do think there are a lot of people who do. I think they believe it would be a good thing. That it would make us all safer. And they might even be right in a theory kind of way. But I don't think that is a world I want to live in. Most people want star trek. I don't think it would actually be a good place. 1984 and all that. This is a slipppy slope argument. And the pressure to do something about gun violance has been growing. I just disagree on how to address it.

Fireworks are undirected explosives so they're foetal WMD's. It's why the same noises are made when they go off as when people see their new baby on an ultrasound.

California didn't just ban the AR-15 because it looks like an assault rifle. It banned a number of specific firearms, some of which are assault rifles, some that only have features that assault rifles have. There's a whole list in statute, and another one the California Department of Justice promulgates of firearms that are banned.

California also banned firearms that have certain combinations of features.

I don't think there is any appetite for revisiting this in California. There were events like the North Hollywood Shootout in 1997. And then the 2014 Isla Vista shooting and the San Bernadino shooting happened, really strengthening overall support for gun control in the state.

The AR-15 ban isn't anything new, and has been the law since 1989.

If someone challenges the large capacity ammunition magazine ban as the seizure, I think they might find the courts more receptive to that argument under Horne v. Department of Agriculture, 576 U.S. ___ (2015).

After a bit of reading, I strongly disagree with the ban on three conditions: a pistol grip is not a feature of an assault weapon, a magazine capacity over ten rounds is not a feature of an assault weapon, and banning weapons solely based on manufacturer and make is stupid.

Definitions can confuse the issue. Call it a mass murder weapon instead of an assault weapon. A semi-auto with large magazine capacity and quick-reloading feature is an ideal weapon to murder a fuckload of people at a dance club, theater, church, etc. A pistol grip makes it easier to hold while your doing it. That's why they make them that way.

That's probably the root of my issue. You don't fix the mass shooting problem by fixing guns. You fix it by fixing people. Fixing the guns, well, people are clever monkeys and will figure out how to kill as many as possible as fast as possible anyways.

(Ugh, fixing people. That one is tough. How does one strip the urge to commit violence out of humanity and add an innate sense of altruism and cooperation back in?)

(...that may be saying a little too much about my own supervillain tendencies, when faced with the question of gun violence I first start looking at solutions involving fucking with the mental evolution of humanity...)

You can kind of fix it by fixing guns. You don't currently have to be clever at all to get your hands on an easy-to-use mass murder weapon. I understand Aussies are every bit as crazy as Americans, but they sure put a dent in their mass-murder problem.

I'd say one factor would be to fight the over generalization of humanity, whether along racial, religious, political, economic lines or any other. It won't stop people escalating personal grievances (school shootings for example) but when those people become Those People, it makes it a lot easier to build rhetoric and escalate from there.

Vastly increasing the size and scope of Dunbar's number is one of those necessary tweaks to humanity that needs to be made.

You can't fix people. You can, however, limit the harm they can do without causing any other problems by taking guns away.

Fortunately, when you look at historic trends, humanity as a whole is pretty good at fixing itself. Gun-related violence hasn't been on the rise - quite the opposite, violence as a whole has been reduced to the point where gun-related violence, which hasn't declined so low, sticks out like a sore thumb.

Also, well, actually... I do kinda have a plan for fixing humanity. It's just that A) it's impossible because we would need a strong AI that we can trust not to wipe us out to implement it, and B) the plan is completely fucking psychotic and has made me consider what kind of monster I could let myself be...

Seems like just taking away guns would be a tad simpler.

I agree that the pistol grip ban is idiotic. Forward pistol grips, ok, there's an argument to be made there that the original popularization was in the Thompson submachine gun, and that pistol grips forward of the action are a feature of assault weapons. But that Springfield M1A is just fine, even though it's a semi-automatic version of the US Army's M14.

High capacity magazines are features of assault weapons. You can argue whether it should be more than 10, but firearms with more than 10 rounds are hunting the most dangerous game.

Banning weapons based on manufacturer and make was essentially ordered by the California Supreme Court in Harrott v. County of Kings, 25 P.3d 649 (Cal. 2001). Basically, the court reasoned that both the cops and people who have firearms should just have to consult a list to find out whether a particular make and model is prohibited.

Shoot them.

It's what they would have wanted.