To elaborate a little, feature bans (like magazines, pistol grips, adjustable stocks) are a fairly "recent" (comparatively) development in gun control. Some idiots figured "if we can't ban the ones we don't like because we've been repeatedly told it violates people's rights, we'll violate them by proxy through banning features of those guns we don't like," and then the market adapting to sell legal versions in CA because they can't actually stop it that way. They're literally always pointless and intended to circumvent the court rulings, and so a cat and mouse game of loopholes is born.

Access restrictions historically go back to the birth of the country, and only because further back than that would be British laws. They were first used against slaves of course, they couldn't own guns, then after that the laws were used to stop free black people from arming themselves in the Jim Crow era, and then specifically to answer "why are the CA laws so bad," well, besides the feature bans which are newer of course the answer for CA's shit laws is Ronald Reagan made them to disarm the Black Panther party who was causing problems for the racist LAPD by following them and making sure they didn't brutalize black members of the community. Access restrictions are firmly rooted in racism full stop. True, today's anti self defense activists are kind enough to extend their fear to everyone, but that is where it came from.

And in many cases, where the Sheriffs office is the deciding factor in who can get permits, in practice that is still how it is used. One I remember reading about, one state had a requirement to get a permit to even purchase a pistol, they ended it, mostly because someone found out 60% of permit denials went to black people. Others are still like that, and that state probably still is with carry permits, tbh.