Gun Group Claims Few Californians Complied With New Registration Law

Gun Group Claims Few Californians Complied With New Registration Law

The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) said the likely registration rate of “bullet-button assault weapons” was only about 3 percent of the total number of firearms in California that fall under the state’s latest expansion of its “assault weapons” ban. State documents obtained by the group through freedom of information requests show the Department of Justice approved 6,213 individuals to register 12,519 firearms under the new law by the end of June. It rejected a further 1,373 registration attempts. As of June 30, 2018, 52,443 applications for registration were pending.

The 66,335 applications for registration pale in comparison, FPC said, to the number of firearms sold between January 2000 and December 2017, which the state said must be registered by June 30, 2018. Using data on gun sales from state records and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the group estimated there were 1.3 million firearms sold in California that would fall under the registration requirements. They estimated an additional half-million home-built firearms fall in the same category.

That would put the number of attempted registrations at about 3.6 percent of the total number of firearms required to be registered.