Lastly, @Club Sandwich since you're in industry, how bad are waits for title 2s?
e-file is about 2 months now, up from 2 weeks. paper filing seems to have a 8-whenever week return. i did papers on a pair of SBRs recently for an agency and even that took 2 weeks for the exemption to come through.
The biggest reason a lot of ranges ban steel case is because there's no profit in jewing it up to resell as opposed to brass.
That and shitty ranges have a fire risk from ricochets.
steel cased ammo is usually verboten for those reasons (sort of) but back in the old days steel case usually meant mild steel core, and that would destroy backstops and cheap steel backers, which are expensive (dig them out, replace them, replace the berm, have to shut down the range that day, maybe get permits if it's an indoor place or near other properties, et c).
when i volunteered as a range troll, the common steel cased stuff i saw was either norinco (mild steel core with a lead nose in yellow boxes sold as surplus) or tula/barnual stuff in cans. it created a hazard in outdoor ranges because the sparks were concerning in dry weather in the fields for a brush fire to start, and indoors for possible ricochets from gravel/concrete, then they would chew up the steel used for the back stops which would need to be replaced over time.
while i guess some ranges might make some money back by recycling spent cases in some fashion, it's generally a money sink because of maintenance and insurance costs so a lot of ranges operate at a loss or very near one unless they also sell ammo, training, or have membership dues.
if you want to shoot steel core/case/jacketed ammo, you should go to a range that has a 100% dirt and wood berm to shoot into. soft enough to prevent riccochets, nothing to make sparks, and it's easily sifted with a PTO sifter on a loader or something. such ranges are usually near ranches. another option is quarries where there is literally nothing to burn, and a ricochet would be too shallow of an angle to come back at you as most quarries are slightly down hill.
So California is weird on this shit btw, a M&P 15 Sport 2 cannot have a pistol grip and forward vertical grip but the 22lr version and other rimfires are exempt from the definition of what is a assaults weapon according to California DOJ.
the law as written specify that a California defined assault weapon is a centerfire semi-automatic rifle with at least two of a list of features, or a semi-automatic pistol with the capability of accepting a magazine outside the pistol grip, or a semi-automatic shotgun with at least one of a list of features, et c. they must be specific because it's not enforceable if it's too vague. back in the 80's when this stuff started to be a thing in CA (after the assassination of Harvey Milk), they tried to ban just features but found it far too vague to be meaningful since you could in theory ban squirt guns under the original proposed legislation. eventually they opted to create a list of makes and models, but found out that (surprisingly) you can have an identical thing with a different name and it wouldn't be banned. ergo they crafted a very specific list and combination of features that were not vague enough to be unenforceable but still open ended enough that they would simply automatically add a banned item to the "list" (there are several such lists).
the prevailing theory is that if the state wants to "get around" laws that preserve gun rights, they would be best served by making the process expensive and confusing, with the consequence being the threat of prosecution, poverty, loss of rights (via court order), imprisonment, or i guess if you fall into one of several buckets, death. then when you indoctrinate children to be socialists and against guns to depend on the state for everything, and they have no experience with guns because their parents don't have any, and aren't part of the gun culture, and are poor, and you expose everyone to sensationalized media that depicts violence as emitting from the barrel of a gun and that it's a Bad Thing(tm), then you win the gun control argument with time, not with law or police action.
when you are dead, your gun culture and ideology dies with you, and your children will give up their gun rights and be happy for it.
