New Year’s Day will ring in some strict new gun-control laws in California, including one that bans the sale of bullet button-equipped guns. In advance of that deadline, sales are unsurprisingly surging.
According to the FBI, background checks of long guns in the state hit an 18-year high. More than 82,000 applications were processed last month in California, a jump of 57 percent over November of last year.
“Folks are rightfully concerned because as of Jan. 1, 2017, sales of those guns will be banned,” said Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California. And most buyers are aware of the state’s 10-day waiting period, meaning the guns would need to be purchased by Dec. 21.
The bullet button ban effectively reclassifies hundreds of thousands of legally owned semi-automatic rifles as “assault weapons.” NRA-ILA slammed the package of gun-control bills and said that instead of making people safer, they will simply turn California’s law-abiding gun owners into second-class citizens.
