CPRC interviewed by The Press Enterprise (Riverside, CA) on new California legislation to ban semi-automatic rifles accept detachable magazines and fire centerfire ammunition

John Lott talked to The Press Enterprise’s Richard De Atley:

Attorney General Kamala Harris and Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, announced the bill — AB1663 — saying it would close what Harris called the “bullet button loophole” for weapons currently legal in California.

“This is a common sense solution that closes a dangerous loophole in California’s assault weapons ban,” Harris said in a statement. “We simply must do everything we can to keep dangerous, high capacity firearms off of our streets and out of our communities.”

However, a gun rights advocate said Thursday that criminally-minded shooters will create workarounds — including using more weapons in their attacks — that will set the stage for another cycle of restrictions which also will fail.

“I think it’s pretty clear that this ban will have nothing to to with stopping mass public shootings,” said John Lott in a phone interview. Lott, who has a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA, is founder of the Pennsylvania-based Crime Prevention Research Center.

“If the California legislature was serious about trying to stop mass public shootings, they would make it possible for victims to defend themselves” by getting rid of gun-free zones, he added in an email message. . . .