(GunReports.com) — Pending legislation in California would make it more difficult for guns to be reloaded with high-capacity magazines. Attorney General Kamala Harris and a Democratic state lawmaker are seeking the change in the wake of this summer’s massacre at a Colorado movie theater.
The state’s regulations allow gun manufacturers to sell weapons in California with magazines that can be removed and replaced quickly using a simple tool known as a “bullet button.” The buttons get around the state’s ban on detachable magazines that can be used to swiftly reload a rifle or shotgun.
Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, said Friday that he plans to amend his Senate Bill 249 in the Assembly next week, adding language to make it clear that state law bans rifles and shotguns with easily detachable magazines.
The National Rifle Association urged its members to call and email state lawmakers to oppose the revised bill, calling it “a gun ban monster.”
It warned that hundreds of thousands of semiautomatic rifles legally sold in California since 2001, when the state’s assault ban regulations took effect, would become illegal under Yee’s bill. The organization also warned that thousands of gun owners could face the threat of arrest.
Yee’s proposal would give gun owners until July 2013 to have their weapons altered so the “bullet button” could no longer be used to detach the magazine. The modification would require gunowners to weld the mag-release button.
