S&W and Ruger to California: No sales for you
Put aside the photo of someone with their booger-hook on the bang-switch while pointing it at their hand.
A new gun law proponents say helps law enforcement has driven Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger out of California, and affirmed the suspicions of firearms rights advocates that the measure is really about making handguns obsolete.
The two companies have announced they will stop selling their wares in the nation’s most populous state rather than try to comply with a law that requires some handguns to have technology that imprints a tiny stamp on the bullet so it can be traced back to the gun. The companies, and many gun enthusiasts, say so-called “microstamping” technology is unworkable in its present form and can actually impair a gun’s performance.
Will they refuse to sell to law enforcement? I’m surprised more industries don’t pull out of Cali, like car makers, due to their silly regulations.
February 22nd, 2015 at 1:54 pm
The reason many don’t is because even with all the restrictions, there is money to be made.
I love capitalism as much as anyone, but there is massive truth to the old saying that a capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with.
February 22nd, 2015 at 2:23 pm
The car makers just export CA BS to the rest of the country. Some place like TX should ban CA compliant cars.
February 22nd, 2015 at 2:32 pm
What if the bad guy picks up his brass?
Or the gun is stolen?
Or smuggled in black market guns?
Or the bad guy files off the firing pin where the ‘stamp’ imprints?
Or… well I thought all semi-automatic gun casings were sent to the cops already in California and all ‘legal’ guns had the cartridge cases on file? No?
Did it catch anyone? No?
Yes it’s a BS law designed to ban semi-automatics. SCOTUS will overturn, meanwhile citizens will be the ones to pay.
February 22nd, 2015 at 3:21 pm
30+ million customers in California. That’s a lot to throw away on principle. In fact, if I’m a Ruger or S&W shareholder, I’d have some serious questions for them. Granted, they don’t have 30 million customers there, but I guarantee you there are more Californians with guns than people in Montana, Wyoming, both Dakotas, Vermont, Alaska and Idaho combined.
February 22nd, 2015 at 3:25 pm
“I guarantee you there are more Californians with guns than people in Montana, Wyoming, both Dakotas, Vermont, Alaska and Idaho combined.”
And the gun owners in my beloved Clownifornia are still outnumbered by gun grabbing jackasses.
Which is one more reason I’m moving to Texas in a week.
February 22nd, 2015 at 3:28 pm
30+ million customers in California
That they can’t sell anything they make to, sadly.
February 22nd, 2015 at 4:51 pm
It IS a defacto gun ban. Period.
February 22nd, 2015 at 5:10 pm
It already cost so much money to get a handgun model “tested” to be allowed to be sold here in CA, that only about 1/3 of the guns sold elsewhere are available. $1500 + 3 guns for destructive testing. EACH sku# has to be submitted. Different color part? That’s a different model as far as they are concerned. And the ok has an expiration, so it has to be repeated a few years down the line. All bullshit. As far as I know, no gun has ever failed their “testing” regime. The test lab isn’t even located in CA.
So, only high volume sales models are sold here. There used to be a work-around for importing non-tested versions, but they killed that with a recent law.
The gun makers need to do what Barrett did, and ban all .gov sales and service in CA. That might get Sackatomato’s attention. I suspect that the cops would just end up with some Chi-Com made guns, or similar, though. That revolver that the Chinese police carry should do just fine. I wonder what caliber they are? I bet it’s some proprietary item, to keep them from being targets of theft by the people.
February 22nd, 2015 at 7:19 pm
I’m gonna have to chuckle the first few times California crime scenes get seeded with used brass stolen from the local Police department range.
February 22nd, 2015 at 8:13 pm
“The gun makers need to do what Barrett did, and ban all .gov sales and service in CA.”
If Barrett started calling the other makers and trying to get them to join the .gov sales ban, would that expose them to an anti-trust lawsuit?
February 22nd, 2015 at 8:17 pm
You mean like this?
February 22nd, 2015 at 8:26 pm
Compared to the costs of either setting up CA specific assembly lines or retooling all their assembly lines for those models, in order to incorporate a technology that is, IIRC, something they would have to pay a third party patent-holder to use, negatively effect their reputation by making their product less reliable, and would cause sales to drop in other states due to the political backlash.
It’s probably not worth the money required to comply.
February 22nd, 2015 at 8:51 pm
I’d think there’s also a liability issue in play: S&W spends mucho dinero to make a CA-compliant microstamping gun, gun malfunctions, CA consumer law makes S&W fully liable, etc.
And, there may be a liability issue in selling non-microstamping guns to CA LE agencies. LE agencies lose guns all the time, if a non-ms gets into the wild, what liability does the manufacturer have?
Ronnie Barrett has the right idea. “We sell to everyone who has rights under the Second Amendment or we sell to no one.” I’d guess there will be a political price to pay if manufacturers leave the CA market but continue to sell to LE agencies.
If the law says “no sales to citizens unless it microstamps” that sounds like CA LE agencies won’t be able to dispose of their old guns in CA (I don’t know whether they do that now or not) so they’ll have to ship them out of state.
February 23rd, 2015 at 12:10 am
Must a Calif microstamping gun be incapable of accepting non-ms parts? Easy enough to make unique firing pin or extractor shape. Is that the goal of the testing?
Would Calif ban the import of non-ms parts? If so, how? Criminalize changing ms for non-ms parts?
February 23rd, 2015 at 9:20 am
Ronnie Barrett is in my general area here in Tennessee. As I understand, he stopped selling to the State of California and even refused to service or send them repalacement parts for the ones they had purchased before the State Attacked the rights of its people. If most all gun manufacturers would refuse to sell to State and Federal governments for that reason, it would shut down these tyrannical gun controllers!
February 23rd, 2015 at 9:46 am
Ron W, that’s the perennial problem. If you could get [All of X] to do [Same Action Y] then you can affect change on a large scale.
However, as a board member for a state level gun rights org, I can tell you you can’t get [.006X] to do [Any 1 of a List of 200 Things] (especially if that list contains ‘money’).
February 23rd, 2015 at 10:27 am
True, Rob. And the other problem is that States and Feds pass gun control laws and exempt themselves in flagrant violation of “the equal protection of the laws” (14th Amendment).
February 23rd, 2015 at 10:34 am
Cali has more guns than Alaska? I can see why you would say that..but in my house there is only 11 guns for 3 able bodied adults (my brother is in a wheelchair and cant use his hands) However there is going to be another AR-15 added this week.
My brother in law has..about that many guns and there are 2 adults and one teenager in their house.
Cali may have more people per square mile,but I think Alaska has more legal gun owning people..*maybe*
February 23rd, 2015 at 2:52 pm
Ed #4, and others calling out ruger and S&W. You have to realize that it is literally impossible to comply with this law for new handguns, since it mandates a technology that does not exist in the mandated form.
For old “grandfathered” pistols, they only stay grandfathered while absolutely nothing changes about the firearm. So to comply, Ruger et al would have to commit to never change anything in their manufacturing process for guns sold to California, which no manufacturer can do.
February 23rd, 2015 at 5:03 pm
I, in fact, am a Ruger shareholder, and have relatives living in Kalifornistan, one of which in fact owns a gun shop, and I would love little more in this world than to see Ruger refuse to sell anything to that hellhole of a state (I’m doing my best to convince them to leave). There’s money, and then there’s goddamned stupidity. Stupidity must be made to hurt, or it’ll just grow and fester.
February 23rd, 2015 at 5:35 pm
BTW, if you noticed, the newspost says “some pistols” will no longer be sold in CA. They are still selling revolvers. No auto-chuckers. The gun banners are still trying to figure out how to get rid of the older technology. I’m going to guess they will mandate that if it doesn’t chuck recoverable brass, then the brass itself cannot be used. Back to cap & ball, or similar.
February 23rd, 2015 at 5:38 pm
I don’t think that Ruger is a big player in the police market but S&W surely is. And what is Glock doing?
February 25th, 2015 at 2:29 am
This was published 1/26/2014 … Is there something new I’m missing?
February 25th, 2015 at 8:02 am
Didn’t notice that