This is why the bans on so-called assault rifles are so stupid

Not just because they don't work, but also because the libtards who pass these bans think scary cosmetic features are what make an assault rifle. The problem is, of course, no semi-automatic weapon is an "assault rifle," no matter how bad libtard would-be gun-controllers want it to be, so banning certain features, like flash suppressors, bayonet lugs, pistol grips, folding stocks or, heaven forbid, "grenade launchers" -- like the New York law does, even though it is already illegal to possess grenades privately and hence having a grenade launcher on your rifle would be either useless or already make you a criminal, assuming you could load the launcher with a grenade -- simply result in gun manufacturers changing the features on the weapons they sell:

As well as banning the sale of assault weapons in New York state, the Safe Act required all those who already own such a weapon to register them with the state by 15 April 2014. The law also introduced a stricter definition of assault weapon: a semi-automatic rifle that takes a detachable magazine and has one of 10 features, such as a "bayonet mount" and a "grenade launcher" but also a "protruding pistol grip".

But many gun shops in New York are offering to replace the grip on a banned weapon to make it compliant with the law. The modified gun still fires at the same rate and with the same power; the shooter just holds it slightly differently. These modified weapons do not have to be registered with the state.

Just Right Carbines, a gun manufacturer in Rochester, has gone one step further. It builds modified semi-automatic rifles specifically for the New York market – and specifically to comply with the New York gun law. The general manager, Anthony Testa, says the company has had verbal assurances from New York authorities that the guns are legal for sale.

 Wow, who could have seen that coming? Well, maybe anybody who paid attention the last time a ban this expansive was aimed at so-called assault rifles, the 1994 federal ban contained within the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. As a gun-banning group noted shortly after the ban expired in 2004, the law achieved nothing, as manufactureres simply eliminated the cosmetic features that made the weapons illegal:

Soon after its passage in 1994, the gun industry made a mockery of the federal assault weapons ban, manufacturing "post-ban" assault weapons with only slight, cosmetic differences from their banned counterparts. The VPC estimates that more than one million assault weapons have been manufactured since the ban's passage in 1994.

What a shocker. If you make meaningless, cosmetic features the basis of a prohibition, the prohibition merely causes the deletion of those meaningless cosmetic features, with no impact on the actual functioning of the item the ban is intended to prohibit. Perhaps if gun-hating libtards knew more about guns, they would be better at banning what they think they are banning. Of course, it already is illegal to own actual assault weapons without a special license which is damn near impossible to get, but let's not quibble over actual facts. After all, liberals don't.

Hat tip to Girls Just Wanna Have Guns.