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by Melting_Harps 2011 days ago
Yeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban, it was completely legal to have a long barrel rifle with 30 round magazines in CA prior to that--they could be open-carried if not loaded back then if I recall correctly, too.

This was around the time of the LA riots in the 90s, too... which in my mind all happened at the same time as I recall being a kid sat in front of the TV not far from it all and being shocked at the level of wanton destruction.

California was always a wild place since its inception and before it was ever a part of the US--many who live here don't even realize that California (both alta and baja) pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism by a significant margin.

LA in the 80s was also Ground Zero for Gang warfare in the US, so us multi-generationals lived through that and adapted and we are am entirely different breed to the transplants and the rest of the US as fires and earthquakes were also taking place alongside those events, as those didn't stop either.

And while I personally have no desire to live in CA anytime soon, except the occasional visit, I'm glad so many decided to leave since COVID. In a decade or two it may look like and feel as it did when I was a kid in the 90s and I may be tempted to go back.

9 comments

I grew up in a leafy village in rural UK. But at one point in the early 90s my dad got an offer to move to SoCal and we went out, I remember visiting schools and stuff, but we never actually went ahead with the move.

Apparently while we were there my dad witnessed the car in front of him being robbed at gunpoint, but decided perhaps that was a one off, don't tell the family, perhaps it's fine... then the exact same thing happened the next night at nearly the same spot.

So that was the end of my potential US childhood.

It's sort of funny how you get used to things and normalize them, especially the violence that occurs in the US. I lived in Chicago for nearly a decade, much of it on the near west side, and it was normal to hear gunshots a few blocks away. Violent crime was normal - a pub restaurant I used to take my kids to along with other families, had a brutal murder where someone got their throat slit. And I wasn't living in a "bad" area either, it was filled with affluent middle class families. This was also with two coal fired power plants puffing away right in the middle of the city (this was in the 2000s even, what a joke!). Everyone just accepted these things as normal for living in Chicago. The US can be weirdly dissonant place at times.
So what you are telling me, all those movies, it's not just Hollywood magic, it's reality? Ugh.
It was for a time. It's not like that anymore, although it is trending that way again in many cities (homicides are up 50%+ in many American cities this year).

Although to be fair, a lot of the crime is in areas the average HN user wouldn't be in. Most people are not worried about getting carjacked or mugged during their commute and have no reason to be. The US is a big place and problems that affect certain parts of it are usually not present throughout the whole country.

Counterpoint: I lived in the North side of Chicago and worked downtown for a few years and I never heard a gunshot. Violence in Chicago is very localized in certain neighborhoods (West side and South side when I was there, not sure about now).
You ever see Taxi Driver? Apparently that movie's depiction of NYC in the 70s was not that far off from reality, and it's jarring.
You can still see remnants of it, e.g. the Port Authority--aka the world's seediest bus terminal. But, as someone who lived in Manhattan for a summer in the mid-80s, it's hard to see things like the "Disneyfication" of the Times Square area as having too much of a downside.
In rx soviet block saying "it's like Chicago" here when there was some sort of crime spree going on was very common and still is. Maybe because of old gangsters, not sure.

But it sure was exotic seeing American music coming and videos talking about murder and shooting like it's a cool thing.

Just a point of clarification for those not familiar with the heist, the weapons used were -not- legal in CA or the US. It was also during the time of the Federal Assault Weapons ban. They were not owned nor able to be owned legally during that time.

It was also the inspiration for Heat’s shootout!

So to clarify that...the federal Assault Weapons Ban applied to semi-auto rifles with certain ergonomic features, including pistol grips, flash hiders, and folding stocks. (Semi-auto is one bullet per trigger pull, full-auto means you can hold the trigger down and spray bullets.)

The North Hollywood robbers had illegally modified their weapons to enable full-auto fire. Since well before 1997, modifying guns like this has been a federal felony that gets you a ten-year prison sentence. That's a prohibition that predates the Assault Weapon Ban, which had nothing to do with full-auto weapons.

The AWB has since expired, and doing your own full-auto conversion will still get you ten years in the slammer. You can buy a full-auto weapon, but only after an extensive background check and approval of your local sheriff, if your state allows it, and only if the weapon was manufactured before 1986.

The movie Heat, of course, also had its robbers using full-auto. Incidentally, the movie came out before the North Hollywood robbery; many people have actually blamed the movie for inspiring the real robbers, one of whom owned a copy of the movie!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_(1995_film)#Impact

From wikipedia: An inventory of the weapons used:[7]

    A Bushmaster XM-15 converted illegally to fire full auto with two 100-round Beta Magazines
    A Heckler & Koch HK-91 semi automatic rifle with several 30-round magazines[38]
    A Beretta 92FS Inox with several magazines
    Three different civilian-model AK-47 style rifles converted illegally to fire full auto with several 75- to 100-round drum magazines, as well as 30-round box magazines.
>approval of your local sheriff

Unless MGs are treated differently than other NFA items in some way I'm unaware of, the new (2016) ATF rules no longer require CLEO (chief law enforcement officer) approval as part of the process, only notification.

Of course certain state laws still have a similar approval restriction in place to comply with state law, but local law enforcement can no longer hamstring the actual NFA process.

>The final rule affects the NFA regulations by:

>...

>...requiring that a copy of all applications to make or transfer a firearm, and the specified form for responsible persons (5320.23), be forwarded to the chief law enforcement officer (CLEO) of the locality in which the applicant/transferee or responsible person resides; and

>eliminating the requirement for certification signed by the CLEO.

https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/final-rule-41f-bac...

Interesting, I hadn't heard about that.
Where do you even buy those pre-86 full autos? Asking for a friend.
Usually at auction. Even poor quality, worn out registered automatics will run in the high thousands, or low tens of thousands because of constrained supply. This creates interesting dynamics where people take cheap (relatively, still ~$5,000 on the low end) legal automatics like MAC-10s and converting them to 5.56x45mm while retaining the original lower receiver.

Example:

https://youtu.be/YjrnB2cXSqM

Wait wat?

These are legal somehow in USA? Can you please trace how and prove it with links?

Automatic guns became regulated in the 1930s, and you need approval by the ATF to own them and they need to be registered. They're in a similar category as bombs, rocket launchers, and whatnot. They are strictly regulated and the government basically knows where each one is at all times.

In 1986, they stopped accepting new registrations for automatic guns. So there's a fixed supply of legal automatic firearms that normal people can own.

Read more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act#:~:tex....

Yes, I own a few in fact. Although I don't live in CA. It was quite an arduous journey too, the paperwork was lost twice, once by the local sheriff (who has to sign an affidavit saying he or she vouches for you) and subsequently by ATF who approve the paperwork and send you a tax stamp as proof of this approval. Interesting Americana for an immigrant like myself and I had to get these machine guns just because it is such an American thing to do.
It's simple.

~~The Assault Weapons Ban only applied to new guns.~~ ATF policy change, not AWB. Existing guns were grandfathered in.

Guns have many interchangeable parts. The part of the gun that the government considers to be the "legal definition" is a part called the lower receiver. You can change almost anything about a gun as long as you keep the lower receiver and comply with any other laws.

So if you buy an old MAC-10 lower receiver that was manufactured before the new ATF policy, and add an adapter [1] that allows it to be combined with the non-lower parts from an AR-15, you can create a completely legal Frankenrifle with mostly new parts!

This isn't even the craziest thing you can do with gun loopholes in the USA. "Pistol braces" [2], originally made for war veterans with amputations to shoot small rifles, have pretty much obsoleted restrictions on short-barreled rifles. "Ghost guns" [3], i.e. lower receivers that have no serial number and do not appear in any database, are easily made by anyone with access to CNC tools (including a few hours rental for a few hundred bucks). 3D printed pistols are becoming a thing [4], although they are not very durable.

1: https://aandsconversions.com/2018/11/25/the-next-big-thing-f...

2: https://www.sb-tactical.com/product-category/brace/

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_gun

4: https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/jzik44/magdump_monday...

Impactguns.com is one well known dealer of ATF regulated machineguns and AOWs [0, 1]. Based in UT if memory serves. Be prepared to drop 10k USD+ And obviously the bg check / atf stamps etc. and any fees your local receiving federally licensed firearms dealer may add.

I have zero affiliation with this site, they just have a large, dynamic inventory so it makes for fun browsing for me.

0- https://www.impactguns.com/machine-guns/

1- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_II_weapons#Any_other_w...

You won’t be able to acquire one if you live in CA, NFA items are de facto banned for ordinary citizens.
Not true
Technically legal, but effectively impossible for an average person to get the permit approved from the state. You'd have to be the head of Apple security or something like that.

https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/firearms/forms...

"De facto banned" for an ordinary citizen is an accurate way to describe it.

Gunbroker.com

Be warned that they cost as much as a car.

My family moved to California in 1987. I remember a school shooting in 1989 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_sh... ) that led significant California state law restrictions regarding guns. Just like the later federal assault weapons ban, they didn’t do a great job of just targeting the scary-looking guns they wanted to target while leaving just-as-lethal hunting rifles alone.
> Just a point of clarification for those not familiar with the heist, the weapons used were -not- legal in CA or the US. It was also during the time of the Federal Assault Weapons ban. They were not owned nor able to be owned legally during that time.

Only semi-correct, they had full-auto AK47s and extended mags, all of which at the time could be purchased and legally owned with a special stamp by the ATF [0]. As a child a friend's father had one he would bring out on new years to only short lived amusement in the neighborhood as we all lived in a densely populated suburb near a major freeway.

But without them, yes, you couldn't just go to a store and buy one off the shelf.

0: https://legalbeagle.com/8731203-class-three-stamp-through-at...

The weapons they used theoretically could have been legal had they had the provenance to make them legal.

Converting your own semi-auto to full auto is in now way legal then nor now.

Full auto guns are basically a rich man's toy and have been since well before new ones were outlawed in 1986. The practicality mostly isn't there for criminal use and they're real expensive to feed.

What happened in 1986 and are you saying it’s legal to own an automatic weapon if it was manufactured that long ago? Do you have to register it? And people can modify them and upgrade them?
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25514950

tl;dr - you don't "have to register" them, because by definition the ones that are legal are already registered. In '86 they stopped allowing new registrations for automatic weapons, but existing registered weapons were grandfathered in. US gun law considers the lower receiver to bear the "identity" of the weapon, so some pretty extensive modification can occur while it technically stays "the same gun" in a Ship of Theseus fashion.

Pretty much all NFA items are banned in California, even with a tax stamp. I believe that was already true at the time
> It was also the inspiration for Heat’s shootout!

The North Hollywood shootout was in 1997, Heat came out two years prior.

No, Heat came out Before that heist.
thats right. what it did was giving the police more militarization and most police now carry an ar in their cruisers(used to be shotgun at best) and also lot more military surplus like nraps.
> Yeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban

I always heard it was events in California (and Diane Feinstein being a key player) that created the ban, but I never heard a specific event in SoCal being the catalyst. Wikipedia cites a school shooting in Stockton in 1989 and an office shooting in San Francisco in 1993. Outside of the state, Wikipedia also cites a mass shooting in Killeen, TX.

> LA in the 80s was also Ground Zero for Gang warfare in the US

Might be true, but also: the 1980s was near the peak of violent crime certainly nation-wide, maybe worldwide. Lots written and studied on this topic. Theories about lead poisoning and all that. Probably multiple factors. But a lot of the discussion then was on urban crime. People thought that cities were dangerous. I'm glad that the last 20 years or so has largely seen a reversal of that.

Lately there has been a resurgence, especially in the political right, of the cities are dangerous mantra. It seems pretty odd to me.

> Lately there has been a resurgence, especially in the political right, of the cities are dangerous mantra. It seems pretty odd to me.

Urban violence (such as in Chicago and Minneapolis) might have something to do with it.

[0] https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-police-homicides-murder-repo...

[1] https://www.startribune.com/staggering-surge-in-violent-carj...

I haven't looked at data in a while, but I am pretty sure those places are safer than they were in the 80s.
If cities have become more dangerous in recent years, people will notice and change their behavior. It doesn’t matter that today’s cities haven’t matched their historic peak, only that they’re worse than they were ten years ago.
Furthermore, a non-trivial number of people are just looking for reasons to move out of cities right now. Consider that many cities that we consider "elite" were losing population well into the 1990s. There's nothing written in stone about college-educated young people continuing to migrate to cities (which is pretty much the demographic that has moved the numbers) as they have over the past 20 years or so.
> If cities have become more dangerous in recent years, people will notice and change their behavior.

Dubious.

Certainly, behavior is driven by perception of danger, but whether perception of danger generally tracks with actual danger or not is…less certain.

I know for child abduction and child assaults by those outside of the family that has historically not been the case; and perceived danger has increased as media focus increased despite decreasing actual danger, for several decades in a row.

I don’t see why similar (or opposite, if media focussed shifted away while actual danger increased) trends would occur with other forms of danger.

I stated that if cities become more dangerous, people will change their behavior. A case of people changing their behavior even though cities aren’t more dangerous isn’t really a counterexample. A valid counterexample would be a case of cities becoming more dangerous and people not changing their behavior.
Thats entirely possible and it probably wouldn't be seen to rebut the right-wing narrative that "cities are dangerous" to tell them "you should see how dangerous cities used to be."
You don’t have to compare urban to urban. In the early 90s, rate of violent crime in rural and suburban areas were far higher than what you now see in Chicago and Milwaukee. Not a surprise when you look at figure 1 of https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv19.pdf
Reply All Podcast, ep 127/128 seemed to claim it's actually not that much better in NYC now. Instead they claim the way of reporting crimes has changed to make the numbers look better than they actually are

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2hx34

I listened to that a few years ago. I don't believe it makes exactly the claim as your summary.

In discussions about New York there is a popular myth that policing caused the crime rate drop, and I think that is what the podcast was challenging. Not necessarily that there wasn't a drop at all. There was across the entire country. Not for the reasons some police departments would like to believe.

IIRC, the reason the LA heist in the early 90s was so important was that it showed how poorly the police were armed compared to the robbers. That led to a lot of policy changes, I believe.
I believe you are correct, but the real issue was not the firearms the robbers were using, but rather the penetrating power of the police firearms against the robbers' body armor[1]. Because they were both wearing body armor, the two bank robbers were shot a total of 40 times without being killed. (One shot himself and the other bled to death).

Police at that point were mostly using 9mm pistols, .38 caliber revolvers, and 12 gauge shotguns, none of which were capable of penetrating the body armor. More heavily armed police such as SWAT were using MP5s, which shot 9mm as well.

The robbery lead to the distribution of higher velocity firearms like the M16 among the LAPD, and a similar incident in Miami lead to the adoption of the 10mm pistol cartridge by thy FBI.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150702091610/http://www.police...

Love it when my local police force gets jealous of the most badass robbery ever televised and decides to go full militarization and then the entire country follows suit.
some cities have been trending upwards in murders over the last decade. Baltimore had almost as many murders in 2019, 2017, and 2015 as it had in 1993, the all time high. the population was significantly larger then, making the 2019 rate the highest it's ever been.
> many who live here don't even realize that California (both alta and baja) pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism by a significant margin.

Alta California was first colonized in 1769, not long before a bunch of British colonies on the other side of the continent that had been settled for quite a while broke off to form the USA; Baja was colonized from 1683. Neither predates British colonization of North America, and the colonization of Alta California only barely predates US independence.

AFAIK Spanish arrived in California around 16th Century, Cortés, Ulloa and Cabrillo led expeditions and created small settlements between 1530 and 1550.

Sir Francis Drake declared English sovereignty over the area of SF bay in 1579 and named it New Albion (New Britain, from Albion, the old Greek name for Britain).

> AFAIK Spanish arrived in California around 16th Century,

Arrived in? Sure, mostly sailing around the coast and transitory land expeditions. So did the British in North America, on both coasts.

But as for establishing any kind of durable colonies (e.g., “California” as more than a name on a map), that came later, and well after British colonies like Virginia were established, especially in the case of Alta California.

The idea that California was some kind of established European colony earlier than British colonization of North America is what I was taking issue with.

California was officially established in 1850 though

the original post said

> pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism

Which is honestly not false, settlements in California formed about one century before the US independence.

Anyway, there were people living in what we call California today long before the Spanish arrived there...

this is still well before us/british colonialism in california though..
> And while I personally have no desire to live in CA anytime soon, except the occasional visit, I'm glad so many decided to leave since COVID.

> In a decade or two it may look like and feel as it did when I was a kid in the 90s and I may be tempted to go back.

I'm curious what you mean by this. What would change for you to be tempted to go back and what do the people that are leaving since COVID have to do with it?

California will never be like it was in the 90s again. The nature of the place is to keep changing.
>And while I personally have no desire to live in CA anytime soon, except the occasional visit, I'm glad so many decided to leave since COVID. In a decade or two it may look like and feel as it did when I was a kid in the 90s and I may be tempted to go back.

A bank robbery every hour?

And I thought my nostalgia for the leaded gasoline and burning asbestos tram breaks smells was odd.

> A bank robbery every hour?

More like a reminder that primitive tendencies can revert Society back to its violent mean really quickly and that in turn instilled a need to want to preserve what we have and build resilient communities to that end as we all felt vulnerable to that ever-present danger.

The fact that no one speaks to their neighbors now is a stark contrast to my childhood in the late 80s and 90s where every kid on the block was a part of the after school 'clique' in one way or another and we looked out for each other so we helped one another in times of need with no real hesitation. It was common to have parents drop off the neighbors kids at different school in exchange for a place to hang out after school and place at the dinner table that night while the parents worked OT etc... This was rotational and we often were at each others homes on different days of the week.

Bi-monthly neihborhood bbqs/potlucks were typical things and were way less tense then some mandated HOA sanctioned community watch meeting where people just snitch on each other and was more a casual event to eat and build bonds share a dish from your families native land with our local neighbors. Many of those people had to leave as things got more and more expensive as time went on and it was a somber experience even to this day.

Then, to me, it abruptly went completely away in the 2000s when ignoring your community completely became normal, and I'm guilty of this, too; I no longer wanted to be a part of the new crowds or integrate into the new ones and sought refuge Online instead as those crowds that were made up of 'less interesting people from somewhere else' so unless we had specific and obvious interests aligned I never bothered, and even then it would be short lived as they were built on very fickle forms of self-interest.

And this persisted until I left CA for the first time.

Again, its probably all survivor bias, and I knew way too many kids in the neighborhood or not far away who died due to gang violence (the shootings at the counter strike internet cafes were particular bad in my area [0]) so I"m not trying to glamorize that aspect. Its just that much like in places with incredibly cold and snowy winters you learn to appreciate one another and their roles in your Life, and since SoCal has perfect weather nearly all year around this was the closest thing that made us see past our superficial differences, and somehow latently knowing it could all go away in a flash gave a stark reminder of how valuable and integral that is to one's quality of Life. You hear this a lot amonst the Korean survivors of the LA riots when the Police abandoned them and left them to fend for themselves, that really hit hard for me and was what made me look past my previously held prejudice of foul smelling kimchi and started eating, cooking and enjoying their cuisine.

> And I thought my nostalgia for the leaded gasoline and burning asbestos tram breaks smells was odd.

I'm a big proponent of EV in a large part because I recall how light headed and nauseating I'd felt riding in the tailgate of a 70s pick up truck on the way to the local to in-n-out or to AM/PM as well as seeing images of the smog of LA would creep in on bad days and the poor air quality all year round was most of my Life as a kid. I don't desire for any of that, despite a large part of my career being tied to the Auto Industry I'm glad we're seeing EV taking over as I remember how orange and brown the sky looked back then.

0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/02/usa.duncancamp...

> More like a reminder that primitive tendencies can revert Society back to its violent mean really quickly and that in turn instilled a need to want to preserve what we have and build resilient communities to that end as we all felt vulnerable to that ever-present danger.

Or, you know, not live in perpetual fear of society breaking down, which is something afforded to us by thousands of years of progress and innumerable sacrifices.

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”- G. Michael Hopf
Any proof for that platitude?
Yea tbh that quote never made much sense to me. Wouldn't the Congo or Somalia be a paradise if that were true?

The whole thing hinges on the definition of Strong/Hard/Weak/Good and how you define them.

For example who is stronger, a turn the other cheek reverend or an eye for an eye preacher?

Not being in perpetual fear of society breaking down seems like a good way to see society break down. What else motivated millenia of sacrifice?
Being aware and rational?
I would say that 'aware' is rhetorically the same as 'terrified', and 'rational' just means 'act optimally', so it's implied.
Regardless of what one thinks of guns, it is technically is still legal to both keep and bear the arms that include a long barrel rifle as well as any amount of ammunition one wants, it is actually the state government in this case that is in gross violation of the Constitution’s law prohibiting the government infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. Just because an illegal law is passed does not nullify and superior law or right; for example, just because CA were to one day decide that freedom is illegal or, inversely, involuntary servitude is now legal, does not only not negate the God given right to freedom, nor does it even negate an inferior amendment to the Constitution barring such an abuse of freedom.
Are there any reasonable curtailments of that right? I'm sure its a cliche but whats the difference between owning a LMG and a bazooka?
I think you can still own both. The bazooka will need a tax stamp for each round if I’m not mistaken. I believe there are still transferable m79 grenade launchers and there are definitely M16 under barrel attachments you can buy.
From a legal standpoint, has any limit been placed on the second ammendment? could someone/has someone sued on the claim they should have access to WMDs?
There is a distinction between a “device” and an “arm”. This is why there is no constitutional right to own a WMD like a nuclear bomb or chemical bomb. Rocket launchers are considered “destructive devices” and you can buy those as well as the munition for it. Good luck getting one though.

However, if you go through proper channels it’s amazing what you’re allowed to own. In some states you can not only own a tank (that’s the easy part - you can even import one if the guns are disabled) but could also have it stay equipped with its standard issue .50cal gun! You won’t be allowed to drive it on public roads though. They are also cost prohibitive.

Hell, you can buy fighter jet if you’d like. But it has to be demilitarized which although still fun to fly would sort of limit your ability to maintain air superiority against a properly provisioned force.

Chemical, biological, nuclear, and anti-aircraft weapons are off-limits according to federal law. These rules have been enforced against people with terrorist intentions, but I would imagine any private citizen who believes they should be able to have them and can actually acquire them doesn't really feel the need to bother with fighting the law so long as they don't use them.
You could be right. The problem is to get there, you’ll need to endure a lengthy court process and enormous legal bills, plus you’ll live a long time in uncertainty.
What California in the 90s feeling are you referring to?