(2) It specifically says that you can't register an AW. How can you register something that you're not allowed to legally possess within the state in the first place?
A correction: You ARE allowed to possess AW's legally here. You have to register 'em before
x date in order to keep 'em.
You're not allowed to BUY/TRANSFER them here. You can't own one
that isn't registered. That's why you have to keep proof-of-reg. on hand to present on-demand if neccessary.
You can't IMPORT them into the state. If you did, you would then have to register 'em, but as there's no new registations after
x date, that's impossible. If there are no new registrations, those that get sold must go out-of-state, diminishing overall supply.
That's how it works. If you've got one, good on yer. If you registered it, you get to keep it. (LOUSY compliance rate for that, BTW. 10% or so.) But you can't sell/trade/transfer it to somebody living in THIS STATE legally. Since there's supposed to be a background check on all sales here, theoretically DOJ would bounce the sale.
Hmmm. I'm not sure how DOJ's gonna handle this. Background checks for long guns get sent to DOJ
with no information about the gun itself, just "long gun". There's no DROS, or Departmental Registration Of Sale, as there is for a handgun, even though the fee is universally referred to as the DROS fee. How are they supposed to know whether a given sales check refers to an AW or not?
I guess they don't, just like the hi-cap. mag restriction. It basically hands enforcement of such details to dealers. Which simply creates a black market, instantly. This means that the 90% of unregistered AW's will theoretically diminish as they are detected and confiscated by LE. That of course won't happen to the magazines, as they're not numbered, and can't be tracked. (That's probably why nobody I know pays a whole lot of attention to the mag transfer restriction. It's patently un-enforceable outside of some kind of sting operation. However, right on the face of it that just means that THAT silly law made most casual gun owners into casual criminals. Way to make less crime, legiscritters, good show! Idiots. But this IS the PRK, after all. What could one expect?)
Ultimately, as the current owners of registered AW's die off, those guns will move out of state through legal channels until none are left in the state, whereupon THEN it will be illegal to actually just OWN one, as there ARE no "legal" guns left in the state. That's going to be a while.
As for classifying .50's as AW's, I imagine the compliance rate to register 'em going to be as dismal as it was for the regular AW's. All that means is that smart people will simply keep 'em, and stay low-profile with 'em, and our legiscritters have once again manufactured a whole new batch of criminals out of folks who represent what is typically the more law-abiding segment of society.
Anybody want to make a comment in the hubris/hypocrisy of the premise that since AW's are so evil you can't buy 'em here, but it's OK to foist these too-dangerous-to-allow-in-the-hands-of-us-peons, evil, criminal-making, chaos-breeding, revolution-inspiring death-machines off onto the citizens of all the rest of the states in this nation? Too nasty to be allowed to sully the hands of the Advanced And Progressive Inhabitants Of Korny Kaliforny, but it's quite all right to export these Machines Of Crime And Death to the rest of our not-quite-fellow citizens, as naturally, We're Better Than all Of Them, Or At Least More Equal.
Or is it that We're Less Trustworthy with tools that are oh-so-effective at popping arrogant legiscritter's balloons, perhaps? Or so the Gubmint thinks, but would never admit?
Niether possibility inspires pride in one's leaders, really. And the premise that AW's, be they .50's or otherwise, are a significant criminal threat is a bunch of hot air.
Or maybe they just assume that we're a lot stupider than they are. Another inspiring thought, that. Unfortunately, one that I can readily see fitting quite naturally in the mind of the socialeftist legiscritters that get elected in this putrid political miasma we call home.
Hooray for the advance of modern civilization. I'm just beside myself, I'm so underwhelmed by it all.
Gubmint's on borrowed time in this stupid state, mark my words.
