Despite being ranked ahead of every other state on gun controls, California still faces enormous challenges in how to reduce gun violence as a result of the millions of weapons already in apportionment in the land and the complication of laws intended to regulate them.

Bushmaster's AR 15 weapons on display at the California Department of Jusice.

Bushmaster's AR-15 weapons on display at the California Department of Justice.

These are the stark figures: Since 1991, close to ix 1000000 guns were sold legally in California alone. Just nearly 1 percentage of people seeking to purchase them were unable to practise so considering of background checks. Over 1,300 types of weapons have been canonical for auction by California's Section of Justice – although the section points out that "private party transfers, curio/relic handguns, certain single-activeness revolvers, and pawn/assignment returns are exempt" from land approval.

And these figures don't include unregistered weapons – those bought and sold illegally – and those brought legally to California from other states.

Neither armed guards on every schoolhouse campus nor a less trigger-happy entertainment culture will practice anything to reduce the massive period of legal weapons into communities across the state. The number of weapons sold legally in California concluding yr – over 601,000 – is the highest number in almost twenty years.

Merely concluding Saturday, within 24 hours of the Newtown massacre, 17-yr-quondam Montreal Blakely, a promising high school football role player and standout student, was killed in San Francisco'south Bayview district by unknown assailants. The following day, 16-twelvemonth-old  Richard Aldana was shot riding his bicycle in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Multiply those numbers over the class of a twelvemonth and the portrait of childhood deaths is even grimmer: 138 children under the age of xviii were murdered in California in 2010, the terminal year for which figures have been compiled by the Centers for Disease Control. Fourteen of those victims were children under the age of 12.

These murders keep occurring despite California'southward pioneering Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act, named later the lawmakers who sponsored it after the 1989 killings of five children on the playground of Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton.

Onetime Assemblyman Mike Roos, who co-sponsored the bill, said he "takes some sort of real satisfaction that at to the lowest degree in California, these kinds of weapons are no longer seemingly the weapons of selection, that in a moment of mental breakup or frustration or anger someone tin't go out and use them in a mass murder."

Not surprisingly, the assail weapons ban triggered court challenges, and forth with them a set of complex and often confusing regulations governing their auction or possession in California. For example, the state chaser general'due south office website states conspicuously that  "AK and AR-15 series weapons are unlawful for auction after August 16, 2000, even if their assault weapon characteristics are removed."

Yet gun shops now openly sell weapons with the AR-fifteen name tag. On its website, for example, a Placerville gun shop with the chillingly casual name Newtown Firearms describes itself as "Calfornia'due south premiere AR-xv and tactical semi auto burglarize dealer in Sacramento." "If yous are trying to buy an AR-15 in California, you have come up to the right identify," it declares.

According to the Department of Justice, AR-fifteen rifles that have been modified with a stock-still, non-detachable magazine that holds no more than 10 rounds practise not fit the definition of an attack weapon. They are thus likely to be legal in California.

Land officials say that without examining the weapons being sold, it is impossible to know if they are legal under California laws – underscoring the complexity of regulating them. "Information technology is not blackness and white," said Michelle Gregory, a spokesperson for the California Department of Justice. "It all comes down to the characteristics of the weapon, whether it fits the definition of an attack weapon or not. Nosotros wouldn't be able to tell without taking a closer look at it."

In the meantime, a vigil was held on Friday in honor of Montreal Blakely in his hometown of Concord, exactly a calendar week later on the Newtown massacre. To raise coin for his funeral, his football teammates sold Christmas ornaments printed with the number 9. That was the number on his football bailiwick of jersey.

Louis Freedberg is executive director of EdSource.

DEALERS' RECORDS OF GUN SALES 1991-2011

Every bit Reported to the California Section of Justice

Year All Guns Full Denials
1991 489,433 v,859
1992 559,608 v,763
1993 642,197 6,509
1994 599,672 6,426
1995 411,668 4,206
1996 353,872 iii,642
1997 355,136 3,454
1998 342,540 3,317
1999 513,418 four,779
2000 386,210 3,475
2001 353,722 iii,607
2002 352,425 iii,833
2003 290,376 iii,028
2004 315,065 3,325
2005 344,847 3,470
2006 375,573 iii,734
2007 370,628 4,299
2008 425,244 four,938
2009 483,872 five,137
2010 498,945 5,026
2011 601,246 five,707
Total 1991 – 2011 ix,065,697 93,534

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