General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Impact of Assault Weapons Ban - Illustration- [View all]backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Turns out that California's laws define an "assault weapon" as a rifle that has a detachable magazine, and one of the following features including a pistol grip, collapsible stock, flash suppressor, grenade launcher, or forward pistol grip. Since the above-pictured rifle has three of those features, if it had a detachable magazine, it'd be an illegal assault weapon.
This particular rifle probably has a device called a California Compliant Magazine release. It doesn't have a simple button you can press to eject the magazine. The magazine release is something that you have to insert a tool like a screwdriver into in order to activate it.
Actually not a bad concept - makes reloading MUUUUUUUCH slower, turning the lethality knob down a tad.
Because my PERSONAL definition of an "assault weapon" is fuzzy, but is directly related to the raw number of bullets it can fire in a specific time period, say 15 seconds. 30 bullets in 15 seconds is too many. 10 is an OK compromise. So if in California law, magazines that hold more than ten bullets are banned, and evil-baby-killing-looking rifles have to have a widget built into them that makes reloading a pain and slows it down a lot, then I'm a lot happier.