California's assault-weapon ban has many "loopholes"

California's assault-weapon ban has many loopholes
By Stan Oklobdzija
[email protected]
Published: Sunday, Jul. 5, 2009 - 12:00 am

If you can't tell the difference between an AK-47, explicitly banned as an assault weapon in California since 1989, and the Russian American Armory Co.'s Saiga, available for purchase at several gun stores locally, you'd be in good company.

Neither can Sgt. Steve Harding, the Sacramento County Sheriff Department's rangemaster and in-house firearms expert.

"The round (it fires) is the same and the mechanism is the same," he said. "It's basically the same thing."

Since the passage of the 1989 Roberti-Roos Act, the Golden State has been home to the nation's toughest gun laws, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Yet weapons can be legally purchased in Sacramento area gun stores that are functionally the same as some of the most famous military rifles in history, such as the AR-15 and the AK-47.

"California coined the term assault weapon," said Sam Paredes, executive director of the California Gun Owners Association. "There is no real definition other than what California defines it as."

A spokeswoman for Jerry Brown, the state attorney general and whose office is charged with enforcing the assault weapons law, declined comment.

In California, assault weapons are either defined by manufacturer and model or by a set of defining characteristics, such as a pistol grip, a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds or a flash suppressor, among others.

Assault weapons, as defined by California law, refer to semi-automatic guns – ones that fire one round per trigger pull. Fully automatic ones fire multiple rounds per trigger pull, and are banned by federal law except for those holding special permits.

Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency physician and violence expert at UC Davis, said this practice created a massive loophole for gun manufacturers.

"If you ban the Uzi by name, they'll call it the 'Ozzie' and bring it back," he said.

For example, the Colt AR-15, which the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department carries a variant of, is illegal for the public to purchase under California law.

However, the Bushmaster Carbon 15 Top-Loader, which is structurally the exact same rifle, according to several firearms experts, is legal for sale and possession in California.

Bushmaster's variant of the AR-15 features a fixed magazine, which unlike the normal rifle cannot be taken out with the push of a button. In the case of the Carbon 15 Top-Loader, a shooter must first open the rifle, using the same mechanism one would use to clean it, before loading the California-maximum of 10 rounds into the magazine.

Another loophole being exploited is the provision of the law that says the assault weapons ban only applies to those semi-automatic rifles with magazines one can remove with a push of a button. Rifles requiring a "tool" to remove the magazine are exempt from the ban.

A device known as a "bullet button" allows use of the tip of a bullet or a similar small object to press a button that releases the magazine, making the weapon legal, and it's only slightly more difficult to swap magazines.

The time difference between swapping a magazine with the bullet-button and the traditional finger-operated magazine release is "three-quarters of a second," Paredes said.

Another way to beat California's assault weapon laws is to simply build your own.

According to Sgt. Harding, anyone can obtain what's basically the same AR-15 that his department carries a variant of if he just buys the gun in parts.

You can buy what's known as a "lower receiver," or the part that contains the trigger and the magazine attachment, that hasn't been banned by name and attach the rest of the rifle's components to it, Harding said.

The result, he said, is "you have a legal gun."

It's this arbitrary nature of the law that upsets Paredes and his organization's supporters.

"The Legislature and the proponents of this ban never really intended to do anything than cause a pain in the butt to legal gun owners," he said. "For all the bluff and bluster on what the assault weapons ban has done, if you look at the hard cold facts, it's done nothing."

Click to expand...