‘Bullet Button’ Used To Get Around California Gun Laws [View all]

[Johnny Rico]

Bearing in mind that it would be more accurate to replace "get around" with "follow the law to the letter"...

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/05/01/bullet-button-used-to-get-around-california-gun-laws/

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) — California has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. But one wouldn’t know that going to the firing range these days. AR-15s and AK-47s are the must-have guns of choice. How can that be? Every time California tightens up the assault weapons ban, the gun industry finds a way around it. The latest example involves a tiny device.

John Largaespada loves his AR-15 and goes to the range every week to fire it. And he’s got plenty of company. “There is usually like a 30 minute to an hour wait for rifle lanes,” he said. That’s because the most popular guns at the range these days are semi-automatic rifles. In a state with some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, how is it these military-style guns are legal?

Brian Normandy is an instructor at Jackson Arms. “As long as we don’t have a detachable magazine in it, it’s actually a legal firearm,” Normandy said. Other states allow people to use their finger to pop out the magazine and quickly reload. It is called a detachable magazine, which is illegal in California.

The intent is to slow down the process of reloading the weapon. But many target shooters don’t like the reloading hassle. “For me to use this on the range, I would have to open up the receiver and top load it,” said Normandy. To get around this, gun manufacturers are selling firearms to Californians with what is called a “bullet button.”

(more at link)

The article is a bit misleading in that detachable magazines are perfectly legal in California as long as they're not for a weapon defined under California law as an "assault weapon". Later in the article the term "assault rifle" is misused time after time...no surprise there. In any case, kudos to clever entrepreneurs who are legally satisfying a market demand!