California Caves on AR-15 Registration Fight

California will reopen its "assault weapons" registration process and pause prosecutions after settling with a gun group over accusations that the process hindered the Second Amendment rights of residents.

California will let gun owners file new registrations, avoid prosecutions of registration violations for at least seven months, and pay the Firearms Policy Coalition $151,821.42 for lawyers' fees, according to the terms of the agreement. Once the court approves the settlement, California will start a campaign to inform the public of the new registration process and give owners of the banned AR-15 variants up to three months to register them.

The expanded ban targeted AR-15s and other guns with reloading devices called "bullet buttons" and went into effect in 2016. The registration system set up by then-state attorney general Xavier Becerra (D.), whom President Joe Biden has since appointed secretary of health and human services, was riddled with technical problems. Many California gun owners were locked out of the registration system. In 2018, the Firearms Policy Coalition estimated only 3 percent of Californian gun owners registered their guns under the new system.