A 49-year-old Las Vegas man was arrested near former President Donald Trump’s rally in Coachella on Saturday with a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said Sunday.
Deputies assigned to the rally contacted the driver of a black SUV at a checkpoint near the intersection of Avenue 52 and Celebration Drive just before 5 p.m. Saturday, sheriff’s officials said.
They allegedly found the driver in possession of a shotgun, a loaded handgun and a high-capacity magazine. The driver was identified as Vem Miller, and was taken into custody and later booked at the John J. Benoit Detention Center on suspicion of possessing a loaded firearm and possessing a high-capacity magazine.
“high-capacity magazine” can refer to anything ranging from a fairly standard AR15 30-round stanag mag to a 200-round box magazine. Like, technically a high-capacity magazine is any magazine that holds more rounds than a standard magazine for a given firearm; but legally-speaking most states with laws regulating magazine capacity tend to define “high-capacity” as being more than 10~15 rounds for rifles.
So they could have had a normal Glock-19 magazine (illegal in some states as they hold 15 rounds, more than some states allow pistols to have) or a loose AR15 magazine in their glovebox from their last gunshoot, or they could have had a 100 round drum mag for their Glock.
Edit: California sounds like they have a universal 10-round magazine limit, which means a standard G19 magazine would be illegal.
Technically, in California, anything that can hold more than ten rounds is a high-capacity magazine, and even if it’s empty and you own no firearms, it’s illegal.