Californians rush to buy assault rifles before ban
People who want to buy an assault rifle in California are now out of luck, as the last day to legally purchase the gun and file the mandatory 10-day background check has come and gone.
The new ban on assault weapons is part of sweeping gun legislation approved by Governor Jerry Brown, but not everyone is happy about it.
Because a Department of Justice background check takes ten days to process, gun owners had until Wednesday to buy one.
For Perry Ralston, owner of Perry’s Sporting Goods in Scotts Valley, the new assault rifle ban lacks common sense.
“How can you make a law when you don’t even understand what you are writing about?” said Ralston. “And they don’t. They just want to see guns go away.”
After January 1, all assault rifles will be illegal in California. The law also bans anyone from selling or passing down the gun to a family member. Ralston, however, thinks the ban won’t help keep bad guys from getting guns.
“It’s doesn’t stop them,” Ralston said. “It just means only the criminal has it, so we make it easier for the criminal to hurt us.”
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence praised Governor Brown’s role in the law, saying it will “curb gun violence” and that is has the “potential to save a lot of lives” but could the law be backfiring before it even takes effect?
Guns.com reports that Californians have purchased 260,000 semiautomatic rifles since July 1 when Governor Brown signed the ban. That’s a 300% increase over the same period last year.
“I have had more customers come in and say ‘I would like an AR-15’ and then say, ‘Oh, by the way, I wasn’t even going to buy an AR-15 until they passed this law,'” said Ralston.
The ban is just latest gun prevention law in California. In July, Prop. 63 will go into effect which, among other things, requires background checks on ammunition.
Senator Dianne Feinstein was one of the authors of the official argument which said that law “will save lives by closing loopholes to prevent dangerous criminals, domestic abusers, and the dangerously mentally ill from obtaining and using deadly weapons.”
