Californian here. They’re not. Lol. I mean you can do a private party sale and the guy is welcome to store the rifle in his trunk on his way to the meet, but all firearm sales or transfers have to be done at an FFL (basically a registered gun store) and require a 10 day waiting period, meaning you’d meet with the person at the store, do a shit ton of paperwork, pay a fee to the FFL and the DOJ, go home without the gun. Then come back 10 days (specifically 240 hours) later to meet up again, do some more paperwork, pay the person, and you’re now the proud owner of a gun that cost you 15-25% more and infinitely longer to acquire than if you lived 200 miles to the East.
Thankfully, making guns so much more expensive and tedious to acquire than damn near everywhere else in the country has rendered it physically impossible for criminals to steal guns or otherwise obtain them illegally. Now, if someone goes on a killing spree in a shopping mall, they may face legal repressions if the paperwork doesn’t come back clean.
Californian here. They’re not. Lol. I mean you can do a private party sale and the guy is welcome to store the rifle in his trunk on his way to the meet, but all firearm sales or transfers have to be done at an FFL (basically a registered gun store) and require a 10 day waiting period, meaning you’d meet with the person at the store, do a shit ton of paperwork, pay a fee to the FFL and the DOJ, go home without the gun. Then come back 10 days (specifically 240 hours) later to meet up again, do some more paperwork, pay the person, and you’re now the proud owner of a gun that cost you 15-25% more and infinitely longer to acquire than if you lived 200 miles to the East.
Thankfully, making guns so much more expensive and tedious to acquire than damn near everywhere else in the country has rendered it physically impossible for criminals to steal guns or otherwise obtain them illegally. Now, if someone goes on a killing spree in a shopping mall, they may face legal repressions if the paperwork doesn’t come back clean.