By: Teresa Mull

California made it illegal to buy a so-called “bullet-button assault weapon,” but don’t worry! The gracious legislature is enabling Californians who bought this style of firearm to keep them – provided they register their weapons.

“The bullet buttons allow users to rapidly exchange ammunition magazines by using a small tool or the tip of a bullet,” reports the Associated Press.

This feature was outlawed back in 2016, but it’s taken the inept government this long to get its act together enough to figure out how to regulate it.

According to the AP, this is “the second time the state has opened a registration window, after critics said it botched the first try in 2018.” The website crashed, and a lawsuit ensued. Now, the benevolent government is granting gun owners who will swear under penalty of perjury that they tried to register their bullet button weapons before but were unable to.

In similar news, GPM reported last month that California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing a bill that would enable residents to sue to enforce California’s ban on assault weapons.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Texas’ abortion laws, Newsom said in a press release:

“I am outraged by yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Texas’s ban on most abortion services to remain in place, and largely endorsing Texas’s scheme to insulate its law from the fundamental protections of Roe v. Wade. But if states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm’s way.

“I have directed my staff to work with the Legislature and the Attorney General on a bill that would create a right of action allowing private citizens to seek injunctive relief, and statutory damages of at least $10,000 per violation plus costs and attorney’s fees, against anyone who manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit or parts in the State of California. If the most efficient way to keep these devastating weapons off our streets is to add the threat of private lawsuits, we should do just that.”

Teresa Mull ([email protected]) is editor of Gunpowder Magazine.