To the best of my knowledge there is no concept of an assault rifle in California law. They define an assault weapon as any of a number of specific rifle and pistol models plus those identified by containing certain features.
The relevant PC is here: http://ag.ca.gov/firearms/dwcl/12275.php The problem with jessbguy's suggestion is that there are certain groups of people who will not abide by any agreement because moving the line is part of their agenda to outlaw all private ownership of firearms. Assault Rifle has a pretty well defined meaning militarily and most laws are written with deference to the meaning quoted in Hentry's email. The term machine gun is also pretty straight forward. Assault Rifles are all Machine Guns but not all Machine Guns are Assault Rifles. The problem is primarily with Assault Weapon. While there are a number of legal definitions, such as California's cited above, the problem is that antis often use this term as a catch-all for "any weapon I don't want people to have." The strategy seems to be to lump MGs and Assault Rifles in with Assault Weapons to dilute the distinction between "Assault Weapons" and other "more evil" weapons. ----- Original Message ---- From: Henry E Schaffer <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, June 3, 2009 5:48:06 PM Subject: Re: [Volokh] Eugene Volokh: California Court of Appeal Upholds Ban on .50-Caliber Rifles Against Second Amendment Challenge I'm including and responding to a letter from [email protected] who wrote in response to my letter on the list, but he only sent it to me. I have his permission to share it with the list. > If I may weigh in. I am a retired ATF agent, now a deputy public >defender in Santa Clara County (CA), and served on the original >California Attorney General's task force in formulating the first >California Assault Weapons Law. (I publicly declare several of us said >the law was a miserable mess from the start - but politics drove the >day). > >It appears that we, as firearms rights supporters, are not unlike our >counterparts on the other side. We are so enamored with terms - "what is >an assault rifle? What is an assault weapon,? what are the differences? >What's a machinegun? Etc. Our community needs to establish hard and fast >specifics of terms and identifiers of those firearms so that when we >speak, we are on the same page. I agree. But the antis make it harder than it need be by popularizing the most extreme terminology. >The following comment serves to illustrate-- > [I think he's quoting from my post] > "Note that this distinguishes between the "military M-16 rifle" (which > is an "assault rifle", i.e. an NFA "machinegun") and an "assault > weapon". I know what an "assault weapon" was in the lapsed Federal > assault weapon ban - is this definition the same under California law?" > >I would disagree with the the assumption that an assault rifle is an NFA >machinegun. Not because the statement is inaccurate, but because assault >rifles, under California law, cannot be machineguns. Assault rifles in >California must be semi-automatic to meet the legal definition. OK - I didn't give all my sources of terms, and clearly didn't (and don't) understand the full complexity of California law. The M16 is an "assault rifle" by the standard military definition: >From the United States Defense Department's Defense Intelligence Agency book _Small Arms Identification and Operation Guide_ (Washington: Government Printing Office 1988): "Assault rifles are short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges." Jane's Infantry Weapons (I'm looking at the 1990-91 17e) is somewhat inconsistent in its usage of "assault rifle", but e.g. on p 239 when covering the USA's M16A2 the section is headed "5.56 mm Colt M16A2 assault rifle" Jane's says this rifle is "capable of semi-automatic and either fully automatic or three shot burst control fire." Both references use "assault rifle" in a way to be included as an NFA "machinegun". (Briefly this means it can shoot more than once with one pull of the trigger.) Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle (accessed June 3, 2009 8:41pm ET) says, "An assault rifle is a rifle designed for combat, with selective fire (capable of shooting in both fully automatic and semi automatic modes)." which agrees with the above. Even if California calls a non-machinegun an "assault rifle" - then that doesn't make it into an NFA machinegun, since the NFA defines this category in terms of what it can do, not in terms of what name is used by the manufacturer, a State or anyone. >Further, the California law, in its 3 tier system of AW identification >is quite different from the now expired federal AW law. I'm not familiar with this California law, and was thinking of the expired Federal AWB law which defines "assault weapon" based on the manufacturer's name of the firearms, or on features which appear to have been copied from catalog descriptions of firearms which look nasty. The law specifies "assault weapons" as being semi-automatic. >Accepting that laws in states and the federal government are subject to >the capricious whims of politicians, and will be different, we need to >set a standard - hold to that standard - such that the vagaries of ill >informed and politically motivated hacks can be challenged on an >intellectual forum. > >Just some thoughts. > >Jess B. Guy >Santa Clara County Alternate Public Defender >408-299-7223 I agree that this would be good. But since there already is terminology in various (existing and old) laws using the bad terminology, I'm not sure we can get around that. Even if we (knowledgeable people) agree that "assault rifle" only refers to "select fire" firearms - then we have a problem with discussing the California law you describe. Thanks for you comments, I learned a little more about California law. --henry schaffer _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others. _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
