California has some of the strictest gun control laws in the United States. One might assume that these strict gun control laws would mean that we wouldn’t see scary looking firearms used in crimes, but one would be dead wrong. The ATF has finished their work on the firearms recovered from the San Bernardino shooting (pictured above), and the results are what we’ve been suspecting all along: the firearms were purchased legally in the state of California, but subsequently modified to be illegal “assault weapons” and even possibly a machine gun (illegal in all 50 states).
From the Wall Street Journal:
The two semiautomatic rifles were versions of the popular AR-15 model, according to San Bernardino officials. One was made by DPMS Inc., and the other by Smith & Wesson.
While they were originally sold legally, with magazine locking devices commonly known as bullet buttons, the rifles were subsequently altered in different ways to make them more powerful, according to Meredith Davis, a special agent with the ATF.
The Smith & Wesson rifle was changed in an attempt to enable it fire in fully automatic mode, while the DPMS weapon was modified to use a large-capacity magazine, she said.
Those alterations made the weapons unlawful under California’s ban on assault weapons, which bans guns with magazines that can detach for quick reloading.
Go figure. Criminals broke the law and created “assault weapons” despite the numerous laws against it. In other news, water is still wet.
What is particularly interesting is that it sounds like one of the guns had been attempted to be converted to fire fully automatic. From the pictures it doesn’t look like the necessary third hole is present in the trigger pack for a full auto trigger group to fit or even a bumpfire stock installed, so that probably means a “lightning link” or something similar was used. Designs for these kinds of things are readily available on the internet, and while properly registered pre-1986 machine guns are perfectly legal there isn’t a single state in the Union that wouldn’t throw the book at you for making your own machine gun. Another state (and Federal) gun control law that was completely ignored.
As for those clamoring to close the “gun show loophole” as a result of this attack, the following sentence might be useful:
The purchases of the two rifles and two handguns carried by the two suspects in the shootings all passed the background checks required by federal law, according to Ms. Davis.
Democrats had already started their anti-gun propaganda machine before the bodies were even cold. My belief is that we shouldn’t start proposing solutions until we actually know all the facts and can pinpoint how to stop this from happening in the future. It looks like these guns DID NOT originate in Arizona or Nevada (as the Huffington Post would have you believe). These guns came from within California, following California’s gun laws through purchase, and California’s massively strict gun control laws failed to stop the attackers from carrying out their plan. Some might think that this indicates the futility of California’s laws, but I get the feeling that Dianne Feinstein isn’t one of them.