Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner unveiled legislation on Monday, January 7, 2012 that would change the rules for selling gun ammunition.
Speaking at a morning news conference outside the state building in downtown Oakland, Skinner, D-Berkeley, said it is currently easier to buy ammunition in California than it is to buy certain medicine, alcohol and tobacco.
She said, "We want to make it as difficult to buy bullets as it is to buy cold medicine."
Skinner said Assembly Bill 48, co-authored by Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, would require ammunition sellers to be licensed and purchasers to show identification, and would mandate that sellers report all sales to the state Department of Justice.
She said it also would require the Department of Justice to create a registry of ammunition purchases that would be available to all law enforcement agencies and to notify law enforcement of large-quantity ammunition purchases.
Firearms professionals contacted by Patch said the new laws wouldn’t greatly affect the way they do business.
“Whatever we have to do to abide by state and federal law, that’s what we’ll do,” said Jeannie, the manager at Peninsula Guns and Tactical in San Bruno. Jeannie, who preferred not to give her last name for this article, said ammunition sales on Tuesday were “no different than any other day.”
Scott Jackson who teaches gun safety for Bay Area Firearms in San Bruno says he has already seen the price of ammunition jump threefold from around $400 a case to $1,300 a case.
Jackson provides bullets for his students so any increase in the cost of ammunition will force him to increase the price of his classes or cut into his profits.
Jackson doesn’t think regulating ammunition sales will solve the problem of mass shootings.
“This (the shootings and the proposed gun control legislation) is the result of dangerous mind altering psychotropic drugs being handed out like candy to our children and their minds being poisoned by violent video games,” said Jackson. “This is the result of the greed of pharmaceutical companies and the doctors they’re in bed with.”
The legislation introduced by Skinner would also ban kits that convert ammunition-feeding devices into high-capacity magazines.
"Currently gun owners can take a magazine with 10 rounds and increase it to hold as many rounds as their gun can hold," Skinner said.
A spokesman for the California Rifle and Pistol Association, which joined the National Rifle Association in a successful court fight against a previous state effort to regulate ammunition sales, couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Bay City News contributed to this article.
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