AR15s in California - Everything You Need to Know

so in our 15s in California if you ask the average and on gun owner they're gonna say that err 15s are not legal in California however that's not really the case and today I want to talk about why that isn't what you can and cannot buy the pros and cons of the various types and how you can actually go about getting them whether you choose to build one for yourself or buy a complete gun what I think is the best option some sort of price ranges that you can look at and how to legally get them so that anyone that's curious about it whether you fall in the left or the right of the political spectrum as far as an tire pro gun you could look at this video and just get a general idea of what is and isn't legal and maybe of a better understanding of the law so let's start with why are a ar-15s difficult to acquire in California well for starters it's mostly just entirely because we have what's considered an assault weapon ban so these guns right here are all compliant with the current state of the law in the state of California they are all in a configuration that makes them legal within the legal limits of the assault weapon ban the assault weapon ban in general is a very simple concept they defined what they think an assault weapon is basically military-style guns and said we don't want you to have those regardless of them actually being any functionally different than any other gun in America they based on how they look could be considered illegal so it is what it is moving into it what can you actually get in state of California well contrary to popular belief you can actually get both ar-15 pistols like this gun here or an ar-15 rifle like this gun here and you're gonna ask yourself what's the difference basically an air 15 pistol is a gun that does not have a stock this is a stabilizing brace it does not have a stock and it has a barrel of less than 16 inches in length so this has an 11 and 1/2 inch barrel and it's got a pistol stabilizing brace this gun is designed to be fired not from the shoulder it can be shouldered but it's not designed to be shouldered now an ar-15 rifle is a gun that has a barrel length of at least 16 inches or longer and has a stock this gun is actually much easier to get in the state of California than pistols but pistols are still available to be gotten I made a video specifically on how to get ar-15 pistols so if you're just curious about that check the link above here and we will talk about that in more depth so why would one get an ar-15 pistol versus an ar-15 rifle well the biggest reason and the biggest reason why there's differences between them is because the laws determining what an illegal assault weapon pistol and an illegal assault weapon rifle is are very different with rifles you have a lot more options so this gun I can go down to any gun shop get a stripped lower receiver or a fully built rifle any time of the day super easy with pistols you actually have to buy something that's on the California handgun roster available for sale or something that's exempt because of weird characteristics so it's a little bit more complicated it's not quite as easy you can't build them for yourself they are 15 rifles this gun is legal in the state of California and can be made legal in the state of California in one of two ways this gun here has a normal detachable magazine so this gun here is a featureless rifle which means it is a semi-auto centerfire rifle with detachable magazines that does not have any of the evil features now what are those features a pistol grip or a thumbhole stock a collapsible or telescoping stock a flash hider this gun has a muzzle brake not a flash hider and it cannot have a vertical foregrip this gun in the state of California is functionally identical to any other ar-15 except the stock doesn't move this isn't a pistol grip by definition and it doesn't have a flash hider or vertical foregrip however semi-auto centerfire I can legally use my legally acquired 30-round or higher magazines whatever I want to use in this gun and I just press a button and it comes out now how are air 15 pistols different well with air 15 pistols or assault weapon characteristics for a pistol the actual features that would make it illegal are different meaning which causes some issue because one of the features on an ar-15 pistol that would make it an assault weapon because it's semi-auto is that the magazine well so where you put this magazine is actually not inside the pistol grip itself so this gun here has a mag well outside of the pistol grip it has what's called a barrel shroud it has a threaded barrel so how is this legal those are all assault weapon characteristics well the reason it's legal is because in order to release the magazine in this gun I have to press this button back here to open the gun up like so in order to drop the magazine I can then close it up pop that pin in put a new mag in and rack it there are much faster ways to actually do that with different parts however the way mine is set up is just very simple for the sake of simplicity there's many great manufacturers out there to make that done a lot quicker bear flag defense cross arm or a juggernaut tactical there's a ton of other manufacturers AR mag lock that basically what happens is it makes it more simple so it's you just press a button on the side it pops open boom mag drops that easy so you just you're shooting you're shooting you're shooting boom new magazine in you're good to go however the way mine is set up is a little bit different so ar-15 pistols ar-15 rifles they're governed differently by either fixed mag or featureless which hopefully I did a good enough description describing to you why would someone want to go featureless and why would someone want to go fixed mag well me personally I am totally in the camp of featureless being a superior platform simply because I can legally use my acquired legally 60 round drum mags and if you want to know how I acquired these magazines and why that might matter to you feel free to check out this video talking about freedom week and you can learn a little bit there so this gun here is featureless I can still grab it pretty normally I got good control over it I got the stock in a position that's fixed in place but where it's fixed in place that works well for me and I can use my 60 round drum mag and just drop it with the press of a button so for me when it comes to rifles featureless is definitely the way to go however some people really prefer to have all of the looks and features of their normal gun which is why I actually have this AR 10 my AR 10 here is chambered in 308 this gun is primarily just a benchrest gun this gun right here is actually one of the other fixed mag guns that I own this is a very simple setup again I just popped the pin out manually to the rear I could drop the magazine this guns chambered in 308 and the kind of shooting that I'm gonna be doing with this gun is primarily hunting so I got a 10 round mag because fixed magazine guns are limited to 10 rounds so 10 rounds of three away I'm mostly going to be shooting this from the bench or hunting in which case it's not a life-or-death situation so if it takes me longer to reload after firing 10 rounds it's not the end of the world I'm fine with potentially losing a deer or a hog because I wasn't able to shoot 10 of them in a row I was only able to shoot 9 and I missed and I want to shoot another one so for me fixed mag has its place but for any sort of defensive use I would definitely recommend a featureless gun chambered in 556 that can use detachable magazines now a lot of people been asking me how I have my gun set up well currently I have it set up like this I've got an aim point Pro so this is a red dot optics on it I've got flip up sights or if that ever died for some reason I have a weapon mounted light on here that is super-bright I've got a fixed position stock in the spot that I like it this is a BCM stock I've got a non vertical foregrip this is a hand stop so this gun here is legal in the state of California in my mind and it functions really well it's five five six its featureless normally when I have it set up for home defense I have this 60 round drum mag in it and you're gonna ask why 60 round drum magnet just a normal 30 round magazine and the reason for that is entirely because if I pick this gun up I want to know that if I grab this gun and only this gun and I'm naked in the middle of the night I don't have time to put on a chest rig and grab all kinds of [ __ ] at the end of the world is coming I want to be able to pick up this gun and know that I have enough ammo to handle anything and that's just me personally how I choose to do it some people are fine with the 30 round mags some people are comfortable with two 10 round mags it's just whatever you choose and that's the great thing about the ar-15 platform is the amount of options that you have and in California you have a lot of options so you can go either pistol so super short fixed magazine normal-length rifle with detachable magazines and it's kind of your own choice so a lot of people are gonna ask would you choose to build a gun and would you choose to buy one and what are the benefits now I'm gonna cover the general basics of the benefits and cons of each one but then I'm going to talk about specifically why California is a little bit different and why I would generally lean towards building one so in the state of California you actually can't buy an ar-15 unless you're 21 in other states you could buy a fully built rifle at the age of 18 but in California semi-auto centerfire rifles like this cannot be bought until you're 21 so the age range doesn't matter if you want to buy an air 15 in California or build an ar-15 you got to be 21 in California because of the laws we have the manufacturer of the gun is gonna actually have to make a specific California compliant model which causes a specific issue and that's availability while in any other state any ar-15 in this in these states you can go and buy California because of the assault looking ban not every single manufacturer is making every single gun that they make California compliant and that's just a matter of supply and demand so in California if you want to buy a gun there's plenty of options you're just a little bit more limited the typical low-end are like the Smith & Wesson or the Ruger five five six you can get those featureless typically or fixed magazine for about 600 bucks personally my recommendation would be to either buy something really cheap like the Ruger or the Smith & Wesson or jump up into the higher high-end range like BCM or Christensen arms or just any other premium manufacturer that's making them california compliant anywhere in the middle that's the sweet spot of building every single ar-15 that I own is actually in some way shape or form a build of mine this gun was a pistol that I bought from flank Franklin Armory and converted to semi-auto so that's still technically in my mind a custom build in a sense this gun every single part was purchased by me and I actually assembled it fully this gun here I bought the complete upper from BCM everything else I put together this AR 10 here I actually bought the upper as well and then built the lower and everything else so for me all of the guns all of the AR style firearms that I own I've actually built or assembled myself or modified myself so in my mind I personally find the best value when you build because you can buy a stripped lower receiver anything cheap from a local gun store that's made with good quality parts and then build everything else yourself you get a little bit of cost savings because when you buy online it's cheaper than buying in store also when you buy a complete gun the feds put an 11% tax on any firearm that's sold meaning that the overall cost is actually more expensive so you save a little bit of money you get exactly what you want you have more options so in my mind for a first-time ar-15 owner you know maybe get one of the Smith & Wesson's or the Ruger's or if you just want to buy one scry once never think about it again you can buy something like a Daniel offense from a store but if you really want to get it into it and you want to learn more about the gun or if you have specific tastes or specific features that you want building is definitely the way to go in my mind just at the very least buy a complete upper receiver group and then build out the lower itself with the stock the grip whatever trigger you want okay so hopefully that answers your questions as far as the types of a ARS you can own fix mag versus featureless building versus buying and my recommendations the price ranges and some example brands that you might think about if you have any more questions about ar-15s in california let me know because hopefully this explains to you the nuances between what you can and what you can't buy so if you have any questions drop a comment I respond to typically everything but if you're a dick I'm not gonna respond to you yes I know California laws suck no I don't want to hear you complain about it or tell me about how great Texas or whatever cool state you live in is if you have any questions about California gun laws feel free to let me know I hope this was helpful to you thanks as always have fun be safe peace

Channel: Reno May

Views: 249,814

Keywords: ar15 in california, california ar15, california compliant ar 15 mag release, california compliant ar 15 reload, ar pistol, ca legal, california gun laws, california compliant

Id: OUXvDe2X474

Length: 13min 4sec (784 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020