California’s Democratic leadership is no stranger to legal fights over the state’s gun control laws, having spent years fending off challenges from Second Amendment groups such as the California Rifle and Pistol Association. Now a new front has opened, with the Trump administration suing the state over a law that restricts sales of Glock-style semi-automatic handguns.
Since July 1, California has barred the sale of Glocks and similar imitation pistols that can be modified with an aftermarket device to fire fully automatically — a conversion that is already illegal under both state and federal law, with limited exceptions. The U.S. Department of Justice argues the new restriction effectively outlaws “the most popular handgun in America” and amounts to a clear violation of the Second Amendment. A federal judge, however, ruled Thursday that California can continue enforcing the law while the case moves forward.
The lawsuit is the latest example of the state having to defend gun safety measures it enacted in the years following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
Several other legal battles are unfolding simultaneously. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is still weighing a case that could unravel a 2016 voter-approved law requiring background checks for ammunition purchases. Separately, the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down state bans — including California’s — on carrying concealed firearms into private businesses and other locations, with Justice Samuel Alito writing that a comparable Hawaii statute unduly restricted people’s ability to carry weapons for self-defense in daily life. And the high court has agreed to take up an Illinois case that could ultimately dismantle California’s ban on AR-15-style assault weapons.
State officials contend the new handgun measure is not a blanket ban on Glocks, but rather a requirement that manufacturers redesign their firearms so they cannot be so easily converted into machine guns.
Gun safety advocates have pushed back against the federal lawsuit. Adam Skaggs, chief counsel and vice president at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said the law responds directly to a troubling rise in illegal conversion devices and homemade machine guns — including the type of weapon used in a 2022 mass shooting in downtown Sacramento — and is designed to keep such devices off the streets.
Federal data lends weight to that argument. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the number of semi-automatic pistols recovered from crime scenes that had been illegally converted into machine guns jumped 784% nationwide between 2019 and 2023.
Original source: CalMatters
