- [Narrator] Take a
look at these two guns.
One is an AR-15 Style Rifle,
that's been altered with something called
a Juggernaut Tactical Hellfighter Kit.
The other is a classic Colt AR-15.
The two guns look kind of different.
But they have a lot of the same features.
And a lot of similarities
in how they shoot.
The biggest difference
you actually can't see.
One has been illegal in California
for more than 30 years, which
is why we had to use a photo.
The other you can buy
at a local gun store.
Over the past few decades
lawmakers in California
have repeatedly tried to ban
what they define as assault weapons.
And each time gun manufacturers responded
by making small changes
so they could continue
selling that style of gun in the state.
One of these guns, an AR-15 style rifle
was used in April in a shooting
at a synagogue near San Diego.
Despite California's bans,
the gun the shooter was using
was perfectly legal in the state,
according to law enforcement officials
familiar with the investigation.
To understand how this happened,
you have to look at how guns
in the state have evolved.
First here's the Colt AR-15 again.
This is approximately
what AR-15s looked like
back before the state's first ban in 1989.
And what they still look like in states
that haven't passed bans.
It has a pistol grip
and a flash suppressor,
features that California
lawmakers have since said
make the weapons particularly dangerous.
This type of gun was banned in 1989
after a gunman entered a school
in Stockton, California, and opened fire.
He killed five, and injured
32 others, using an AK-47.
After that, the state
passed the Roberti-Roos
Assault Weapons Control Act,
which bans certain guns by name.
- There was a lot of outrage,
and this was the impetus
for the first assault weapons ban
in the nation, in California.
- [Narrator] In response,
gunmakers started
developing similar guns
with different names.
That meant that guns like the Colt AR-15
were changed slightly and resold
with names like the Colt Sporter.
Then, in 1999, lawmakers amended the law
to ban weapons with specific parts.
Such as semi-automatic rifles
with detachable magazines,
pistol grips, thumbhole
stocks, folding stocks,
grenade launcher, flash suppressors,
and forward pistol grips.
But there was a way around this.
Guns with fixed magazines
could keep these features.
- One of the areas they
focused on was making it
harder for mass shooters to reload
and have as many rounds of
ammunition in their magazine.
The definition of a fixed magazine
was that you couldn't
remove it without a tool.
And the manufacturers realized that
a tool could be a bullet.
- [Narrator] So gunmakers
modified guns so the magazines
could be changed with a single bullet,
which met the state's
definition of a tool.
This allowed them to
keep the banned features
and still sell guns with magazines
that could be changed
without much trouble.
This became known as the
Bullet Button Loophole.
This bullet button modification
was legal in California
for around a decade.
Then, in 2015, two shooters
stormed a holiday gathering
in San Bernardino, California,
and killed 14 people.
They were carrying AR-15 style rifles
with bullet buttons they
had bought in California
and then illegally altered.
After the shooting, lawmakers
tried to pass new legislation.
This time they focused on closing
the Bullet Button Loophole.
- This incident caught the attention
of a state lawmaker by
the name of Steve Glazer.
And he decides he wants to try to close
this so-called Bullet Button Loophole.
And so he does something to
ban these bullet button guns,
and what he does is changes the definition
of a fixed magazine to
one that cannot be removed
without the disassembly
of the firearm action.
- [Narrator] The law passed, which meant
bullet button guns were banned.
And yet again modifications were made
so that more AR style
features could be kept.
Remember the AR style rifle with
the Juggernaut Tactical
Hellfighter from the beginning?
The Juggernaut Tactical Hellfighter
is a kit that alters
an assault style rifle
so that users can change the magazine
by cracking open the action
just a hair, like this.
Gun dealers say this legally counts
as disassembly of the firearm action.
So gunmakers started here.
And decades later, after
multiple assault weapon bans,
they ended here.
- If you talk to any gun dealer
or person who shoots guns,
they'll tell you a
California compliant AR-15,
as they are called, shoots just
the same as a normal AR-15.
The bullet's going just as fast.
- [Narrator] Smith and Wesson,
Ruger, Colt, and Juggernaut
did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson from the National
Shooting Sports Foundation,
a trade group for gun manufacturers,
said of the state laws,
"They're basing the bans
strictly on cosmetic
features that have no bearing
on the operation or the
function of the firearm."
A spokesperson for the
California state attorney general
declined to comment on
the modified weapons.
