California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) is one of the people pushing to keep "high capacity" magazines, anything that holds over 10 rounds, illegal in the Golden State. For one week, Californians had the opportunity to get their hands on these magazines because of a court ruling that overturned the state's ban. One week later, the same judge issued a stay, which meant the ban went back into effect while the lawsuit, Duncan v. Becerra, was settled in court. Any magazines obtained during that week-long period were legal.
Although it's impossible to know exactly how many "high capacity" magazines were sold during that week, we have a few pieces of evidence that show it was in the millions. Gun stores and ranges couldn't keep the magazines in stock. In fact, some were even having to put limits on the number of magazines a person could buy at one time just to try to keep them in stock for a short period of time.
"Everything was all sold out. I basically took whatever I could get," Chris Puehse, the owner of Foothill Ammo in Shingle Springs, east of Sacramento, told the Daily Mail. "People loved it. It was like we were out of prison and were not treated like bastard stepchildren of the country anymore."
According to Puehse, the magazines he had in stock lasted only a couple hours and that was even with the limits he put in place.
"They disappeared," Puehse said. "They wanted to grab more than I let them, otherwise they would have been gone even faster than a few hours."
Now here's the best part of the entire ordeal.
A few hours before the judge issued the stay, Becerra said California was in danger of becoming 'the wild, wild West for high-capacity magazines," the Daily Mail reported.
"There are those who are now trying to flood the state of California with what were until this decision illegal high-capacity magazines, the type of magazines that are used in firearms to commit the mass shootings that we've seen throughout the country," Becerra said.
Ruger and Palmetto State Arms both diverted all of their in-stock inventory to send to California. For a short period of time, other states couldn't order stock because the companies were focusing solely on the demand from the Golden State (probably because they knew the order wouldn't last very long).
Naturally, gun control advocates ran with the notion that flooding the state with these magazine was a strategic move.
"They [gun rights organizations] have a very specific purpose and intent here to try to set up for the court that these are devices that are very commonly used and possessed," Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence' California legislative affairs director Ari Freilich said.
Don't you just love how people like Becerra make gun owners sound? Anti-gunners are quick to paint gun owners in a certain light:
If you're someone who owns "high capacity" magazines, you must want to commit mass carnage, not hunt or partake in the shooting sports.
If you're someone who advocates for owning "high capacity" magazines, you must be a criminal, not someone who wants to protect his or her own life.
They don't talk to us. They don't listen to us. And they sure as hell don't care about us. They're too busy painting us as something we're not to realize that we value life, love liberty and condemn those who harm others.