Hollywood Ball
Mountaineer
From SHOT Show...
http://www.calgunlaws.com/2014-shot-show-day-1/
I emailed Ruger through their "Email the CEO" page on their website and received this email that somewhat clarifies their predicament...
http://www.calgunlaws.com/2014-shot-show-day-1/
Ruger is going to stop selling semiautomatic pistols in California:
In perhaps one of the more shocking discoveries at the 2014 SHOT Show, Ruger spokesperson Kevin Reid revealed that Ruger was going to let it’s entire California Semiautomatic pistol roster “…drop off…” the CA Department of Justice Approved Handgun List.
It seems that in Ruger’s slavish dedication to the concept of “continuous improvement”, and that California is milking some $ 200 per pistol per year to stay on the list AND that microstamping is now the rule, Ruger has already let some 60+ semiautomatic pistols drop off the approved handgun roster with the rest shortly to follow. (Note to the legal beagles out there: NSSF Governmental Relations/State Affairs Director Jake McGuigan did announce at an early morning seminar that NSSF had filed suit on or around January 9 regarding the microstamping issue in California.).
How this effects Ruger Sales of revolvers and rifles in the Fool’s Paradise of Kalifornia remains to be seen. While Ruger continues to produce excellent revolvers, California gun owners are notorious for voting with their feet against businesses that desert them when the chips are down. Hopefully this won’t too badly effect the roll-out of the latest GP-100 (seen below.).
I emailed Ruger through their "Email the CEO" page on their website and received this email that somewhat clarifies their predicament...
We are now being forced to retest all of our guns (pistols and double
action revolvers) as their time on the roster expires. And we are having
them all retested. But we cannot meet the micro-stamping requirement for
the pistols. These guns are passing all the tests they passed the first
time around, but there is no technology that can pass the micro-stamping
requirement, so the CADOJ is refusing to recertify the pistols and
consequently they are not getting renewed on the list. The CADOJ will not
even accept the data from the test labs that shows the guns passed every
test except the microstamping.
The net result is that the double-action revolvers are getting renewed on
the list, and the pistols are not. But we are trying everything we can to
get them back on the list.
Also, as voting members of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, we
have been instrumental in pushing them, as the representative of our
industry, to take the lead in initiating litigation in California to
overturn the microstamping regulations. They filed suit last week to do
just that.
Sincerely,
Mike Fifer