California Blocks New Gun Control Rules

The far-left state of California has surprisingly made a move that benefits gun owners: blocking new gun control rules.

The rules that were blocked would have forced various gun owners to register their firearms as so-called “assault weapons,” which included rifles that featured “bullet buttons” that cause magazines to easily detach. Presumably, the newly-registered assault weapons would have led to an eventual ban on those weapons, with the registry making their confiscation possible.

The problem is that items that would have been designated assault weapons under this rule would have been too extensive, as National Rifle Association attorney Chuck Michel argued, saying there were over “40 new assault weapons definitions.”

“It seems like they’re trying to stretch the law to cover a lot of guns that shouldn’t be deemed to be assault weapons under the law,” Michel told the Associated Press (AP).

It seems strange that a dark blue state like California would allow such gun control rules to be blocked, but it’s due to the fact that the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) determined that the rules didn’t go through the proper comment period before the state legislature passed them. The reason for the block of the rules is a procedural matter rather than an ideological one.

The state has to get the rules approved by July 1, 2018, the final deadline established by a bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) for gun owners of the newly-classified assault weapons to register their firearms.

Warner Todd Huston noted that the state is already dealing with gun registration problems:

There is already a major problem for California’s gun owners with the earlier registration rules meaning that millions of California gun owners are already technically in violation of the law.

Despite that the state passed its original gun registration bill, the state still doesn’t have the registration website in operation.

In July 2016, Brown signed scores of gun control bills into law that will cause more headaches for gun owners in a state that already featured strict gun control laws. The OAL’s blocking of the gun control rules will provide a temporary relief for California’s gun owners.

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