And this is just one of the many reasons why. I keep seeing crap about the Buffalo shooter illegally “modifying” his Bushmaster XM-15 rifle (when some dumbass isn’t calling it an “AR-15” which happens to be a Colt trademark). Case in point:

Buffalo shooting suspect learned to modify his gun on YouTube. The videos are still online.
The 18-year-old suspected of targeting and fatally shooting 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York, wrote in what are believed to be his online journals that he learned how to illegally modify his rifle by watching YouTube videos. The suspect appeared to link to the videos in Discord chat logs, and the videos were still available on YouTube as of Thursday evening — five days after the shooting.

The advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund called on YouTube to remove these videos, saying that they violate YouTube’s community guidelines banning videos that show how to install gun accessories like high-capacity magazines.

Since thus far the only “modification” I’ve heard about is that he had 10+ round magazines, I was very curious as to exactly how he “modified” the rifle. What do the supergeniuses at Everytown say?

Based on a review of the shooter’s writings and public news reports about the weapon used in the shooting, the shooter may have watched this video to equip his Bushmaster rifle with an Anderson Manufacturing magazine release after removing the Mean Arms MA Lock in violation of New York’s assault weapons regulations.

Ah. So Everytown believes the chumbucket might have removed the magazine lock and installed a conventional magazine catch so that he could swap out magazines in a normal manner.

I’ll pause for a moment, to see if you can spot the problem with that. It’s possible you won’t, if you live in neither New York… nor California.

All “assault weapons” are not created equal. Except in a few jurisdictions that have defined the term in law, it’s meaningless. For instance, In Georgia there is no such thing as an “assault weapon.”

But in New York, there is such a thing.

California has also defined “assault weapon.”

But the definitions differ in each state.

In California, the powers-that-be decided that you should not be able to swap magazines normally. There, an AR-pattern rifle must be equipped with a magazine lock that makes normal operation impossible. So if the Buffalo, New York scumbag wanted to travel to California, purchase a California-compliant rifle, and modify it to allow normal mag swaps, he might want to remove an MA Lock and replace it with an AA mag release.

But New York does not ban mag releases, as California does (I’m open to correction, if someone can find such a restriction in the law). They just say you can’t insert a magazine with a capacity greater than 10 rounds.

So the Buffalo bastard would have zero reason to “modify” his rifle by removing a feature not there in the first place, and replacing it with a feature it already has.

The Everytown dimwits assumed that As California Goes, So Goes the Country. If California requires something then surely every other state must do the same, right?

Nope.

It is possible that the Bushmaster the shooter purchased was California compliant as well as New York compliant. The manufacturer/distributor could have simplified production by combining the worst of both states, just so they wouldn’t have complicate their production lines with two products, each with limited appeal. To date, I have not seen a picture of the specific firearm used; I don’t know if it was dual-compliant.

But that doesn’t make the Cal-required mag lock the law in New York. In NY, installing a normal mag release would not be an “illegal modification.”