New anti-gun bills in California

Two new anti-gun bills have been introduced in the Assembly:

•  AB 1663, Chiu. This bill will reclassify all semiautomatic, centerfire rifles as “assault weapons” if they can accept a detachable magazine. (i.e. the “scary features” requirement will no longer be required to call a rifle an “assault weapon”.) Sales would be banned after January 1, 2017. Owners of affected rifles would be required to register them before January 1, 2018.
• AB 1664, Levine. This bill would reclassify all “bullet button” rifles as “assault weapons”. Sales would be banned after January 1, 2017. Owners of affected rifles would be required to register them before January 1, 2018.

As of this writing, the NRA has not taken a position on either of these bills and no action by members is being requested. Watch these pages and calnra.com for changes and updates. We will let you know when, or if, action is required and whom to contact.

If you are not an NRA member, join now. Your fellow gun owners in California need your help protecting our liberties more than ever. If you’re not a gun owner, but you respect the 2nd Amendment and the rule of law, join the NRA. Owning a gun is not a requirement for membership!

A few background items, particularly for you gun muggles…

• Assemblyman Chiu, from the Bay Area, is a protégé of convicted gunrunner Leland Yee. Rumors that Chiu received a Christmas fruit basket from Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow are probably false.
• When the Legislature was first debating “assault weapon” bans in the 1990s, gun owners pointed out that the only things the gun grabbers were objecting to were cosmetic features that do not affect the actual operation of the firearms in question. We said that this could open the door to banning all semi-auto rifles. We were told that we were just being paranoid. AB 1663 proves that we weren’t being paranoid.
• A “bullet button” is, no matter what Fox News’ Gregg Jarrett might think, is a modified magazine release. In the rest of “Free America”, you can safely release the magazine of a semi-auto rifle or pistol by pressing a button. In California, semi-auto rifles with the appropriate scary features cannot have this industry standard release. Instead, the magazine release must require a tool to operate. The California DOJ ruled that a pointy object, such as the tip of a bullet, satisfies the law’s requirements. A bullet button is a replacement magazine release that requires a tool to operate. The standard button is replaced with a shroud that covers the actual release making it impossible to operate by hand. The bullet button wasn’t invented to “skirt the law”, but rather to comply with it. And now the gun grabbers are objecting to gun owners complying with the law. Go figure.