Florida school shooter may not have been able to buy the same gun in California

SAN FRANCISCO -- The 19-year-old man who killed 17 people and wounded 14 others at a Florida high school on Wednesday had legally purchased the semiautomatic rifle he used, authorities said Thursday. But he may not have been able to buy the same gun in California, experts said.

The pace at which the suspected shooter, Nikolas Cruz, took the lives of students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with an AR-15-style rifle has prompted yet another call for greater gun control -- a debate that is likely to reverberate in California, which has enacted stricter laws than those at the federal level.

Cruz passed a background check when he bought his weapon from a federally licensed dealer within Florida law, authorities said. Under federal and California law, people can buy rifles at age 18 but must wait until 21 to buy handguns.

Unlike Florida, though, California has an assault weapons ban -- first passed in 1989 after a shooting in a Stockton schoolyard -- that heavily restricts the sale of AR-15-style rifles.

The law bans the sale of dozens of specific models of semiautomatic rifles, which when fired load the next round automatically. And in an effort to stop gun makers from circumventing the law, legislators prohibited certain characteristics of weapons as well.

Rifles with detachable magazines, which enable swift reloading, can't have any of a number of features that give them added functions or make them easier to handle, such as forward grips, folding stocks or flash suppressors.

It's wasn't clear Thursday what exactly the Florida gunman carried, but he reportedly had numerous ammunition magazines.

California has also, since 2000, banned the sale of magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds. The state in 2016 passed an outright ban on possession of high-capacity magazines, but a judge blocked enforcement.

Possession of assault weapons that were bought before the state ban is also legal, as long as the gun is registered.

According to experts, California residents have also been known to build illegal assault weapons by purchasing gun parts and putting them together. Known as ``ghost guns,'' the weapons have been used in other mass shootings. Last year, Kevin Janson Neal killed five people in Tehama County with at least two home-built semiautomatic weapons, authorities said.

While Florida law allows purchases of AR-15-style rifles through federally licensed dealers, people there can buy the weapons from private individuals, too. California does not allow these private, unregulated transactions.

Allison Anderman, a managing attorney at Giffords Law Center, a gun control advocacy group based in San Francisco, noted that a person in Florida could buy a gun, no questions asked, through Craigslist.

``These highly lethal weapons of war are very, very easy to get by people who should not have any gun, let alone these types of killing machines,'' Anderman said. ``It is no surprise that these things keep happening. These weapons are the weapons of choice for mass shooters for very obvious reasons.''

John Donohue, a professor at Stanford Law School, said of gun regulations, ``At least California tries to make it hard, where states like Florida try to make it easy.''