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“There is no compelling reason for a government to register firearms except as a necessary step toward confiscating them.” – California gun writer Joel Persinger in California Gun Owners Are Already Subverting the State’s Expanded Assault Weapons Ban [via thetrace.org]

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77 COMMENTS

  1. Reason number 6:

    In case you need to use your rifle to defend yourself from government thugs acting in violation of the U.S. Constitution and your inalienable human rights.

  2. Fuck California. Anybody enforcing this unconstitutional bullshit deserves to be taken out into the street and shot. “I was just following orders” didn’t save the Nazis at Nuremberg and won’t save the jack booted thugs backing up this bullshit in CA when it comes time to deal with the state’s commie infestation.

      • Guards at the extermination camps and SS troopers went on trial as well. Many of them used the “I was just following orders” defense, but to no avail. It became so common that it’s now called the Nuremberg defense.

    • “Just following orders” saved the Soviets up to, until, and after the USSR collapsed. It excused their pact with Germany to take Poland, too. Elderly executioners and architects of the Cheka/NKVD are not prosecuted at the tender age of 94. “Just following orders” is a valid excuse if you win, I suppose.

      • The trials after WWII were a joke to justice. It was nothing but the execution of the losers by the winners. With the exception of those who were tried for the Holocaust- who also were not afforded anything like competent legal representation and were judged by the those most inclined to want them dead- most of those hanged or imprisoned were punished for being on the losing side and did nothing more than what the Soviets (and to some extent the other allies- firebombing, Hiroshima, etc) did during the war.

      • Counting on a “just following orders” exemption from common humanity will not prevent even the most common soldier from being shot dead on the spot, regardless of who eventually wins or loses. And a dozen of those will provide much more incentive to become human than 100 such soldiers being tried 20 years later, if they leave any witnesses to testify.

    • How ironic that a guy with the flag of the Hungarian Nazis as his avatar is complaining about gun registration.
      Your Arrow Cross buddies registered guns, then rounded them up, then rounded up Jews for mass execution.

  3. You can be certain that all those folks who bought $249 AK47 “Thumbhole Sporters” from Bill Clinton’s Chinese friend during the AWB are not going to register their weapons. It will be a lopsided fight during the next big riot.

  4. The progressives are going to find out, like in New York and Connecticut, that it’s a whole lot easier to pass a law restricting a person’s rights than it is to force people to follow that law.

    • Eh, they don’t care as much about actually enforcing the laws as they do in making them. That way they continue to destroy rural/gun culture and make felons out of law-abiding citizens.

  5. Talk about the dumbing down of America: a mag release is now to be called a “bullet button!” Ridiculous!

    California is loaded with street gangs and home invasions involving multiple gang members. That means civilians need AR-type rifles to equalize the situation—the AR is the perfect platform for taking out multiple criminal assailants. California officials don’t care about crime victims at all. After all, look at how they got ‘gamed’ by the Manson ‘family’ and many other notorious criminals. Californians are essentially on their own against crime. The AR is the only true friend Californians have against multiple criminal attackers.

    • You don’t have any clues about what you are taking about.

      “… are now to be called …” nope, bullet buttons have been around for years.

      A bullet button is a specialized magazine release to suit the California law which requires using a tool to drop the mag; it requires a small pointy tool, like a spitzer bullet, thus the name.

      What this law has changed is making that specialized mag release illegal. You now have to disassemble the action.

      • Since you seem to know what you’re talking about, answer me this; now that you have disassembled the action, how difficult is it to replace the bullet button (or its successor) with a standard mag release? Of course it would be illegal, but who cares? There is no way anyone will ever attempt to enforce this stupidity, and if they do I’d bet “I will not plea bargain, I demand a jury trial!” would bring that to a screeching halt.

        These morons have been assuming for decades that all you have to do is pass a law and everybody will fall in line, no matter how stupid, unconstitutional, and unenforceable the law is. Those laws need to be ignored. It has been a rare week in the past 10 years that I have not carried into a “gun free zone”.

        • A bullet button fits in just like a standard mag release. The only difference is that the main body of the “button” is fixed in place, with a small opening to access the actual button that requires a tool to access.

          The workaround I’ve seen for the new law is a quick release rear pin with an internal button that drops the magazine. Those parts are interchangeable with standard pins and mag releases as well.

          So anybody who can change out simple parts on an AR could convert back and forth in a matter of minutes.

        • “how difficult is it to replace the bullet button (or its successor) with a standard mag release?”

          So easy a news reporter could do it.

        • Why do we comply? Because no one wants to be a test case and rely on a jury annulment. This is the state that voted over 60% for the ammo background check bill. Most smart people bought multiple lowers, some at least pre- 1/2014 (when rifle registration happened) and will option them as featureless or bury them or never leave the house with them. Most will build a few with bullet buttons because they want to go to the range and shoot them. Mine is 25 mile trip away, it is too easy to get pulled over and arrested.

        • Yo, son! So, how many times have you been pulled over and unconstitutionally searched without a warrant, up to now? Not being a smartass, I don’t live in or even frequent that nightmare state, maybe it happens all the time. But that was the kind of question I asked myself before I became a scofflaw. No one ever decided to violate my civil rights by pulling me over for no reason and holding me at gunpoint while disassembling my car and strip searching me. Without that, these laws are flat out unenforceable. If you comply you are a sucker, and they are making fun of you. No, you cannot search my car without a warrant, and my lawyer will meet you at the courthouse to inquire as to your probable cause for that warrant.

        • I ignore those signs that warn of entering ‘unarmed victim’ zones also. To hell with those signs. Concealed is Concealed.

      • Do you have some sort of reading comprehension issue? No one with a brain uses the phrase “bullet button” in gun states.. the notion itself is idiotic.

        • Concept is, I think, you have to use a bullet to release the magazine, like using a bullet to adjust the sights. Assuming anyone from a state within the United States will understand that is a bit weird, I’ll admit, but the name does describe the abortion. And yet, the bullet button was too assaulty, we had to go even *further*! Next thing you know, KA will go all the way, and outlaw murder.

      • Felix,

        Go easy on Buzz, will you? It seems to me that we are all on the same side. Of course the bullet button has been around for a while, as well as numerous ways to “repair” it.

  6. Simple question:
    How will registering certain rifles prevent jaded ex-boyfriends, gang bangers, spree killers, or terrorists from attacking us?

    Simple answer:
    Registering rifles will NOT prevent such attacks.

    At best, absolute best, if an attacker is stupid enough to register his rifle and leave it at the crime scene, it would point police in the right direction after the attacker wounded/killed everyone. For the life of me, I cannot imagine any scenario where such an attacker would drop his/her rifle at the scene of the attack and run away.

    At best registration might help police capture an attacker after an attack in an extremely tiny number of cases. How tiny a number? I would be surprised if there were one such case in the entire state of California in the next 50 years.

    • And the supposed justification to register rifles totally ignores the fact that simple pump-action shotguns are every bit as (if not more) devastating as any military pattern rifle.

      Newsflash: whatever a jaded ex-boyfriend, gang banger, spree killer, or terrorist planned to accomplish with a military pattern rifle, they can accomplish just as easily, quickly, and effectively with a pump-action shotgun. Thus any law to “regulate” rifles is meaningless.

    • “I cannot imagine any scenario where such an attacker would drop his/her rifle at the scene of the attack and run away.”

      Well, let me help, then! That might very well happen if it was not his rifle, like if he stole it last night and has worn gloves since, so his fingerprints are not on it. Otherwise, of course not, don’t be ridiculous.

  7. You know who else had a gun registry? The Alexandrians. Neegan came in and used their own registry to make sure he got all the guns from them. Let’s not forget the lessons of apocalyptic graphic novels.

    Actually, that show – despite it’s repeated failures when it comes to actual firearm use – is the most pro-2nd Amendment show ever to be aired.

    • That was the main takeaway from that episode, what happens to registered firearms. I wonder how many non-gun owners picked up on it?

    • that same card was played by the commies in the first Red Dawn. Remember the gas station/gun store where the red leader wanted the 4473s to match what was for sale with what was supposed to be in the inventory. The missing guns cost the shop owner his brain matter.

      So the only viable solutions to this situation is to buy and sell as many guns as possible and bloat the database to the point it is useless. 300M guns, seventeen pieces of paperwork per gun with most still on actual paper. Throw in some state lines and buying back your own gun, and you can do the math.

      The gun tracking system works great until it doesn’t.

      • The fault with that logic is: Computers.
        Every NICS check is done using computers. Yes, I know, there’s not supposed to be a registry made of such checks. I also know that Fast and Furious wasn’t supposed to happen. Those who believe the FBI doesn’t have a list of those computer checks and the guns that go with them are, IMHO, very naive.
        Computers are tireless, and data mining is very real. Relying on only paperwork really is a thing of the past.

        • That is why, if any firearm of mine makes it through a week without being lost in a boating accident, I sell it at a gun show and buy an identical one whose serial number I forgot to note. So of all the guns in the world, the only ones you can be *CERTAIN* I don’t own, are the ones I filled out a 4473 for. Except, of course, my 4473s go nowhere other than into the dealer’s drawer, since my license makes submitting them unnecessary, now.

    • Wonder if movement could be made on a federal pre-emption of carve-outs. See how the statists like it when they have to follow the same rules as the peasants.

      I should write a letter.

  8. I never registered any of my firearms when I lived in Kalif. They can shove their registration where the sun don’t shine!!
    In 2004 we moved to the free state of Idaho…..

  9. The Borg command in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento has ordered your assimilation.
    As I remember the process was very violent.

    • Good point. Does CA require you to watch the news, so that you would know what stupid law they passed this week? If not, why pay attention to them until you are specifically informed, individually, of what action is required on your part? Which is, of course, completely impossible. And try to imagine, in your worst nightmare, a District Atty informing the jury of just what a Bullet Button is, and why they are about to be robbed of a week of their lives to consider your case and decide your fate, due to your misadventure with a … what kind of button was that again? You dragged me out here for THAT? Are you SHITTING me?

      There will be no jury trials, just do not plead guilty to *anything*, and the law is completely unenforceable.

    • The patriots are all smart enough to watch from a distance and keep to themselves in secret.

      Its pretty much a given that if you step up, you are just going to get cut down and no one else is going to back you up. Your only options are to go on the run for the rest of your life should you opt for the whole “civil disobedience” route, or stand your ground for the state to plow you under. The TPTSB will brand you a terrorist along with anything else they can come up with. You and all your family will lose everything they ever had, likely prison time and endless harassment, stigma, etc.

      The patriots are around indeed, but, they aren’t going to put their necks on the chopping block when its not going to make a damn bit of difference to the status quo. Especially in the current environment.

      Until there is significant organization among patriots, groups that can weed out agitators, spies, and have the financial and legal strength to fight all the way to the supreme court and then some, well, its not going anywhere.

      Bundy ranch is an example where the number of government agitators and spies literally out numbered the actual protestors, utterly ridiculous.

      TLDR; The ‘patriots’ are passing on their knowledge and weapons from one generation to another and biding their time.

  10. FWIW CA governor J.Brown has been making some pretty passionate speeches lately so he must feel the heat coming down from Washington.

  11. I’m a displaced northern New Englander stuck in California for the foreseeable future so I have a bit of an outsiders perspective on this whole thing.

    I’m of the opinion that finding mechanical workarounds to the state’s AWB are ultimately a waste of money and energy. It’s clear that every workaround will be promptly met with a new a ban, which will have no trouble passing given the Democratic super majority in state government. The ultimate goal is clearly to ban all semi-auto rifles that accept a detachable magazine. Unless the tactics of pro 2A groups I predict that will easily be accomplished by 2020 at the latest.

    The first hope, of course, is a supreme court ruling to kill some of these ridiculous laws. That would be nice, but I’m not too hopeful. A lot of people are hoping the Trump presidency will do something, but I’m pretty sure Trump only cares about Trump (pro tip: never trust an authoritarian no matter what side of the aisle they’re on). It’s best to assume we’re on out own.

    A change of tactics is needed in California. The old method of screaming about rights will continue to fall on deaf ears here. Why? Because as a whole the population of California is vapid, lazy, narcissistic, and collectivist (another pro tip: never trust a collectivist). Californians don’t care about freedom or rights (those are work). What they do care about, however, is fairness.

    The conversation needs to be rewired to frame gun control as a classist and by extension racist endeavor. When gun control advocates bleat about “making guns harder to get” what they mean is making guns more expensive to own and operate via the piling on of permits, taxes, etc. The wealthiest echelons of society will always have access to guns either directly or via private security forces. What I want to try to get people to consider is, why is it apparently ok for the wealthy elites to own guns, but not us filthy poors? I want people to start publicly asking elected officials that very question.

    Finding loopholes in laws is only a delaying tactic and the legislature will catch up. For instance, I wouldn’t be surprised if fairly soon CA legislature goes after handloading as it’s currently the only way around the new ammo registry laws.

    • Re: Trump. The guy so far is living up to his campaign promises, and doesn’t seem to be afraid to use the power of the federal government to threaten states and jurisdictions into complying with his administration’s goals. Given the host of executive orders he’s signed so far, I have no trouble believing that he’ll get a true conservative put on the SCOTUS. Imagine if he gets to appoint 2 or 3. Then, the lawsuits can start flying. I get that the SCOTUS only takes a very small percentage of cases, but at some point this will be an issue that has to be addressed. My guess will be when tyrants like Gavin Newsom (next in line in Commiefornia) and Andrew Cuomo push for full semi-auto bans you’ll see a case that SCOTUS will take and likely rule in favor of gun rights with a conservative majority. You have some interesting ideas about changing the argument about guns, but at the end of the day I think the only way forward is through litigation.

      • Best case scenario with the ways the courts work by the time Trump could appoint 2-3 justices and the lawsuits move forward we would be talking 10-15 years away.

        • We won’t *truly* know how the Scalia’s replacement will vote until they do.

          I’m sure after being appointed the other justices will feel the new justice out on where they stand on things.

          If after appointing the new one the court grants cert. on a 2A case I suppose the the other conservatives will have some confidence on how he-she will rule.

          (And if they *don’t*, that may speak volumes as well, considering Kennedy’s un-reliability…)

  12. It’s cute that non-Californians think that the politicians here who author these civilian disarmament laws even have a pretense of saying that the laws are intended to prevent crime, terrorists or mass shooters. If you actually watch the video testimony by these tyrants from the 2016 legislative sessions where all of this passed, they aren’t even making a pretense that these laws are to stop any crime. They have came out and said it, on the record, for all to see, that we law abiding gun owners are the problem with society, that we “Should be ashamed, owning machines of death” and “that we who dare to testify against them should have our mouths washed out with soap.”

    As we have been warning you “free staters” for years and years, civilian disarmament is a Cancer and we are the genesis point. Californian politicians and ideals are spreading and metastasizing all over the western US.

    Nevada – done, going full blue, AW bill almost passed with Bloombergs money behind it. Nevada, for gun owners is done, stick a fork in it. It will take a few more years but soon Nevada will be at gun law parity with California.

    Oregon – Ditto

    Washington – Ditto

    Colorado – Ditto

    The holdouts are Idaho, Utah and Arizona but even friends who live in the free-ist gun rights state in the country, Arizona, report major infiltration of liberal Californians are invading Phoenix, Tucson, Prescott and Flagstaff. Numbers matter when the local Dems put this crap on the ballot.

    Commifornia is a lost cause, but some of these other states can hold the line with the right organization and tactics. I pray that happens.

    • Negative. Colorado is not a lost cause. There are fighters here that made those dipshyte politicians pay for the 15 round mag limitation. Since then, they have not raised their pumpkins again for fear of (figuratively) getting them shot off. The mag limitation will eventually go the way of T-Rex.

      • I agree, the electorate in Colorado who voted out the morons who authored the magazine law were great, definitely a step in the right direction. But you in Colorado cannot rest on your laurels, civilian disarmament is right in your front yard, just waiting for the next mass shooting excuse to pass all kinds of crap. They do not rest and will not sleep, they will keep attacking your rights and they will make headway. Think of all of the Californians who have invaded your state and are now registered voters. Conservative Colorado voters are not your problem. Left leaning, Californian invaders are.

        As Texas is learning, you cannot fight demographics. Older white conservatives are dying off, replaced by young Latinos. Young Latinos vote Democrat, plain and simple. Sure, Texas is good for gun rights today but check back to what happens by 2022. Texans would be wise to put all of their resources and political capital possible into converting those your Latinos into pro 2A voters or they will eventually be as disarmed as we are.

        It’s not like we are in uncharted waters on how all of the crap goes down, I hope that policy makers and pro 2A groups study the downfall of California and learn from it. Thank God Hillary was slapped down and thank God we will gain two or three new SCOTUS nominees under President Trump. I don’t think people yet realize that we are in the midst of Civil War 2.0, it’s just not being fought with guns on battlefields.

    • Way, way, WAY off the mark on NV dude. The only “bill” that passed was the UBC petition that barely squeaked by using the shadiest tactics possible, and because of said tactics, has been rendered null and void. Gun ownership and rights are alive and well in the battleground state. Especially once the issue of the illegal immigrant vote is addressed.

    • California is a cancer. Speaking as a California native who finally had enough and left; if your new neighbors from California are lefties, go out of your way to make them unwelcome. The more these assholes complain on social media to their friends back home, the fewer will come our way.

  13. The fact that proponents of “assault weapons” legislation (lets calls them “central planners”) are dismayed that gun manufactures find means to circumnavigate their laws, and that citizens choose to ignore them reveals either extreme stupidity or obvious duplicity on their part. Even a cursory review of human history (particularly American history) reveals that people will defy laws which they feel are unjust. Furthermore, a detail review of current gun laws in the often vaunted gun control paradises of Australia and the UK reveal that if one determines that “assault weapons” are too dangerous for an individual to own than ANY GUN OF DEFENSIVE UTILITY is also too dangerous to be owned by the public. Its not accident that the Aussies outlawed ALL repeating shotguns and rifles and illegalized armed self-defense. Legislators in California (and elsewhere) are either laughably ignorant as to the mechanics of modern firearms and the dynamics of violence OR, as stated above they’re deceptively obscuring their incremental desire to outlaw armed self defense. So, such these central planners either need to recognize that banning guns because of their cosmetic features will not further their stated agenda of saving lives and back off such efforts…or…they need to be honest with the voting public and take steps to repeal the 2nd Amendment thereby freeing themselves to regulate armed self defense in oblivion and irrelevance. In my humble opinion if you follow this issue to its logical conclusion one is left with those two options. I, as someone who values liberty choose the former.

  14. Bullet buttons were NEVER legal. A letter from the Attorney General agreed not to prosecute, but that is much like stealing a pencil – illegal but too small to prosecute.

    San Bernardino killers used legally purchased bullet button ARs and there was an outcry over terrorists arming themselves legally that it had to pass this law.

    Same reason why open carry was banned – because it enabled terrorists immunity until they opened fire.

    Expect far more weapon restrictions to prevent terrorists ease of operations

    • “San Bernardino killers used legally purchased bullet button ARs and there was an outcry over terrorists arming themselves legally that it had to pass this law. ”

      Which they promptly removed and replaced with regular mag releases because… of course they would.

  15. Nonsense on top of nonsense.

    For the “never register” crowd, if you bought rifle out after 2013, it’s already registered.

    If you bought a pistol since the mid ’80s, you’re registered — so whether you register anything else or not, mostly moot when they come to kick your door in.

    When you buy ammo next year, you’re registered. Bring on the door kicking. “We see you’ve purchased a lot of 5.56 ammunition, why is that?”

    If you don’t want to register, un-featurize your rifle. The actual benefit of not registering the rifle as an AW is not so much that it’s “not registered”, but rather that RAWs are third class citizens, they have a crap load of restrictions surrounding them that an non-AW doesn’t have.

    For extra BS, there’s some talk that if your rifle came with a Bullet Button, you have to keep the Bullet Button, vs the older Registered AWs which just have normal mag releases. But there, the DOJ is simply making crap up. We’ll see how that shakes out.

    The “work arounds” that make reloading a bit more convenient are useful, but not handy. There’s nothing convenient about disassembling the action, even on an AR, even one modified to make it as convenient and easy as possible. It’s fiddly and cumbersome.

    Better off wrapping your handle in a piece of plastic to make it “featureless” and keep your mag release.

    Finally, registered, unregistered, featured, or featureless, especially with an AR, it’s all moot. Your rifle is a screwdriver away from being whatever awful thing the state thinks it is. AWs may have been banned, but AW parts…not yet.

  16. Has anybody thought about a lower incorporating an integral, port-fed rotary magazine with the ability to accept stripper clips? Basically a Johnson Rifle utilizing standard AR components?

  17. “There is no way anyone will ever attempt to enforce this stupidity, and if they do I’d bet “I will not plea bargain, I demand a jury trial!”

    Good luck in finding a jury of your peers in California. Those in the jury pool are the same ones that elected Jerry Brown, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsome, Henry Waxman, Diane Feinestein, Barbara Boxer, Kamela Harris, Barbara Lee, et al. ad nauseam.

    • The case will never come to trial. Especially if there are millions more, the state will go bankrupt trying to bring them to trial, that is why plea bargains are so popular, they persuade you to just give up, pay a fine, and surrender your right to own a firearm forever. If you fall for that, you deserve it. Has any otherwise law abiding citizen been prosecuted, yet? Like, a trial? They’ll drop the charges rather than have a trial.

  18. This guy, this video… made my day. Love it.

    Sure, he’s not saying anything particularly special that the rest of us aren’t thinking… but the refreshing enthusiasm, and matter-of-fact tone without annoyance and irritation was simply inspiring.

    Also making my day is Farago making a simple declaration about his daughter (in another post… re: Pulse comic, I think…). Well, me too, my kid, she is, and ain’t it wonderful. Great country with great people.

    Be safe, and free.

  19. As RATM so eloquently put it later in their Lefty protest song Killing in the Name of “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me”.

    What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If Lefties won’t/don’t comply with laws, rules and regs they don’t like why should the rest of us?

  20. Crap like that is a huge part of why I no longer live in California. I absolutely love Arizona, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep this state a bastion of firearms freedom.

    • Progressive urbanites who are in thrall to their liberal leaders. They outnumber the gun owners in California. It’s not dissimilar to the situation we face here in New York – upstate is conservative and red, but NYC has us outnumbered and we are forced to live under the yoke of progressive tyranny.

      Yes, I know you were being rhetorical with your question.

  21. Good points in the video!

    I’m on record as heavily supporting the Trump campaign, and a number of other pro gun candidates and causes. Another SCOTUS justice is in the works, and you can contact the Donald Trump administration via facebook. There is also a Whitehouse petition for the Trump administration to oppose CA’s recent attacks on the 2nd Amendment:

    https://www.facebook.com/Owens187/posts/1331412896902026

  22. Not sure if anyone will read this but if you do check out cross armory ca safe mag and quick pins- (crossarmory.com) another bullet button option for those stuck in ca- just found the sight. I don’t work for them. They’re expensive but better than traditional bb’s.

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