Why pistol grip illegal

Gunsmiths can give you further advice on whether these rules apply in your situation, and how to avoid creating an illegal firearm. Some areas define shotguns as designed for firing from the shoulder. Depending on the configuration of the grip, this can render a pistol grip shotgun illegal. Legislatures sometimes set out exceptions to this general rule for the sake of clarity for gun manufacturers. Texas clarified its shotgun definition to allow the manufacture of the Mossberg , for instance.

These exceptions vary from area to area, so a pistol grip shotgun for sale in some cities will not pass muster everywhere. If a pistol grip shotgun gains its legality by avoiding classification as a shotgun, it might instead become illegal due to classification as a destructive device.

While federal law often rules the other way on things designed to fire shotgun ammunition, some states and municipalities disagree. Some pistol grip shotguns end up with unusually short barrels as a feature of their designs.

Weapons like these, when available on the market, have been designed to be neither pistols nor shotguns and thus subject to neither set of rules. Local laws may decide otherwise. In this case, a pistol grip shotgun can become an illegal firearm due to its barrel length. While legal in some areas, they can be a felony in others. Do you often travel for hunting purposes?

Lanza reportedly fired six bullets from his AR just to get inside the locked school. So, in the alternative universe I just described, he would then have to more or less exhaust one of his two pistols to kill the principal and school psychologist he encountered after entering. At that point, as he headed for the classrooms, he'd have six more rapid-fire bullets left, after which he'd have to reload his guns bullet by bullet. Is there a single legitimate use of firearms that requires more than six rounds of continuous fire?

Certainly not hunting. And not any sort of self-defense that's realistically imaginable, unless you've recently antagonized a Mexican drug cartel. As the gun lobby gears up to battle proposals such as this one, you'll hear a lot about the fact that mass killings are actually a drop in the bucket of total homicides.

But mass killings take a disproportionate toll on the nation psychologically and spiritually. Thirty individual people dying in isolated assaults in various cities is a horrible thing, but it doesn't terrify our children, and it doesn't turn our schools into bunkers. The sort of law I'm describing would make lots of current guns illegal. I actually own one. So you'd have to phase the law in over a couple of years, and, to overcome political resistance, you might have to compensate gun owners for surrendering newly illegal guns--or for having them altered to comply with the law.

And, even then, the resistance would be very, very strong. Men are also more than eight times more likely to take their own lives with a firearm. While mass shootings seize public attention, they do not claim the most lives. Half of gun deaths in California are suicides—a disproportionate number of them among white men over the age of Most gun homicides, meanwhile, are not high-profile acts of mass carnage, but random outbursts of violence that strike communities least likely to draw news crews.

Over the last decade and a half, the average annual homicide rate has fallen nearly in half in California. Contrary to the stereotype of gun-ridden big cities, there is now no significant difference in the rate of gun violence between rural and urban areas in California.

Do tight gun laws lead to lower deaths? Or is it that states with less gun violence due to different cultural attitudes about guns or varying economic and demographic patterns are more likely to adopt tighter gun controls?

Three separate studies found that in states that keep guns away from those under domestic violence restraining orders, gun homicide rates between partners are 9 to 25 percent lower. California has such a law on the books. A similar study found that denying guns to those with misdemeanor violent crime convictions reduced their chances of being rearrested for another violent crime by 30 percent.

California has this type of gun ban in place too. But another study estimated that when states require gun vendors to get licensed, conduct background checks and are subject to inspection, gun homicides can be expected to fall by more than 50 percent.

But more recent research using the same statistical techniques but with a larger dataset claims to show the exact opposite. But overall, when you look at systematic reviews of legislation on homicides and suicides, it is fairly clear that legislation designed to place reasonable restrictions on how firearms are sold or maintained or stored does lead to decreased fatality rates.

The response sure as hell cannot be more guns. He was the driving force behind Proposition 63, a ballot measure that put sweeping new restrictions on ammunition sales and banned high-capacity magazines like the ones used in Thousand Oaks.

Pro-gun arguments once resonated in California. But that silent, well-armed majority failed to materialize in when Prop.

Included in that group were 49 percent of the conservatives surveyed. California is often considered the innovation hub of the United States. Why should it be any different for guns? Consider the case of the bullet button. To get around the ban, many gun owners came up with a solution: install a small lock on the magazine that can be easily opened with a small tool or the tip of a bullet.

Legally speaking, that tiny bit of hardware would transform a contraband assault weapon with a detachable magazine into a perfectly legal rifle with an ever-so-slightly-less detachable magazine. In , California lawmakers caught on and amended the law. That prompted the development of yet another workaround device: the Patriot Pin. And so the arms race over arms design continues in California.

But legally, that makes all the difference. Under both federal and California law, an unfinished receiver is just an elaborately shaped piece of metal. Under a law passed in , Californians with home-finished receivers were given until January 1st of to register their gun with the state.

In , a man killed a highway patrol officer in Riverside County with a home-assembled ARstyle rifle. A student at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita also used a kit-assembled weapon to murder two fellow schoolmates before killing himself.

Jerry Brown. But with a new governor came a new approach. In , Gov. Newsom signed a law requiring anyone hoping to purchase an unfinished receiver to undergo a background check. And in , newly-elected president Joe Biden followed suit.

In early April, Biden announced three new executive orders aimed at curbing gun violence. One would require unfinished receivers to be etched with a serial number and subject ghost gun purchasers to a background check.

In , state voters passed Proposition 63, which banned magazines with a capacity to hold 10 rounds or more. Though a law restricted the sale and manufacture of new high-capacity magazines, existing owners had been grandfathered in. After the courts agreed to place a temporary hold on the Prop. California appealed the decision.

Court of Appeals. In March , three judges from the court put the proceedings on hold to wait for a ruling in the Duncan case. Supreme Court declined to take up the case.

In , the U. State Department settled a case with the Texas nonprofit Defense Distributed, allowing it to publish its 3D-printable gun designs online. California joined a multi-state lawsuit filed by the State of Washington against the federal government. The states argue that allowing the release of those codes violated their right to regulate firearms within their own borders.

In November , a federal judge sided with the states. But this being the Internet, the files are out there. California has a lot at stake in the outcome.