“I don’t like it, but I’m living in a state where I don’t have a choice,” Dittmer said as he stopped by Auburn Outdoor Sports on a recent afternoon to buy a sleek black AR rifle.

In the aftermath of a horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, California lawmakers advanced dozens of gun control measures in 2013. Despite that fervor for tougher firearms laws, the most stringent and far-reaching measures largely failed. The discards included a bill by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg , D-Sacramento, that would have outlawed semi-automatic weapons with detachable magazines.

Even as those bills met their demise, a previously passed gun control measure loomed. Assembly Bill 809, signed into law in 2011, imposes on rifles and shotguns the same record-keeping requirements that currently apply to handguns.