Readers React: California’s half-measures on guns and ammo clips won’t work

To the editor: As a gun owner, it was interesting reading about the regulations being considered in California. (“California’s proposed gun laws won’t change our culture of violence, but they will make us safer,” editorial, April 22)

I take exception to SB 1407, which would require that gun parts like a lower receiver be registered by the owner. This places the burden on the wrong party. There is no way to ensure the buyer will follow through and register a receiver.

The burden to register should be on the manufacturer, which should be required to affix a serial number to the part. Any California purchase should automatically be recorded with the state Department of Justice.

I see SB 1446, which would ban the possession of ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds, as a futile exercise. The only real solution would be to ban the sale of all semi-automatic rifles. All rifle purchases should be relegated to single shot, bolt-action receivers.

Playing around with magazine capacity and detachment controls is simply doomed to fail.

John Charles Lemr, Seattle

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To the editor: The phrase “bullet button” to describe the recessed button on a gun that can be pushed with a pointed object (like a bullet) to release the ammunition clip sounds scary. Only a crazed criminal would want one of those, right?

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, anti-gun legislators made a bullet button mandatory in California.

A bullet button makes it slower to release a magazine and insert another one. Instead of simply pressing a button with a finger to release a magazine, one must pick up a pointed bullet and insert the tip into the recessed center of the release to drop the magazine and load another one. This makes the gun more time consuming and slower to reload, which is exactly what anti-gun people wanted and got.

Now that is not good enough. When will people realize that it is not the metal object that is the problem, it is the criminal?

John Henry, Culver City

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