The Department of Justice is suing the state of California over its newly imposed ban on the sale of Glocks and other striker-fired handguns, and now California’s Department of Justice has responded to the feds’ request for a preliminary injunction.
California Attorney General (and Democrat candidate for governor) Rob Bonta offered a hodgepodge of reasons for the judge to deny injunctive relief, starting with the argument that the DOJ can’t bring a pattern and practice lawsuit as a facial challenge to a state law. That might be the best argument Bonta has, because his bold claim that a ban on the sale of commonly-owned arms doesn’t implicate the plain text of the Second Amendment (which he first made in a filing back in July) is completely bogus.
… the challenged provisions do not directly regulate “the ‘keeping’ … or the ‘bearing’” of firearms. Instead, these provisions govern which models are available for retail sale, without prohibiting anyone from possessing or carrying any handgun.
The Ninth Circuit has already recognized that without the right to acquire, the right to keep and bear becomes virtually impossible for most people. Bonta then argues that, even if the right to acquire is protected to some degree, the ban on striker-fired handguns is not a “meaningful constraint” on the Second Amendment since it doesn’t ban every handgun on the market.
California argues it can ban the sale of Glocks because you can buy other guns – an argument already foreclosed by Heller. That is how arrogant these antigun states are when they are in an antigun circuit; they are confident they can count on hack courts to continue to ignore… pic.twitter.com/EZrHdKbWIC
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) August 25, 2026
Bonta basically threw out every argument he and his staff could think of. There’s a tradition (he claims) of banning “especially dangerous use[s] of [] weapons” so California can ban the sale of pistols that aren’t “especially dangerous” (much less dangerous and unusual), some states banned machine guns in the 1920s and 1930s so California can ban the sale of semi-automatic handguns today, and that those historical laws have the same intent as the state’s Glock ban: “to protect innocent persons from harm from especially dangerous uses of weapons.”
The Supreme Court has already said that in order for an earlier law to suffice as an analogue, it must share the same “how”, not just the same “why.” But California’s attempt at defining the “why” of those historical laws is also so broad that it could be used to justify virtually every gun control law on the books, though Bonta does try to explain why that isn’t so.
Historical laws restricting weapons used in especially dangerous ways were enacted in response to dangers at the time, such as the criminal use of machine guns in the early 20th century and the use of trap guns and bowie knives in assaults in the 19th century. As those weapons circulated more widely among civilians and were used more frequently in crime, governments restricted them, while permitting access to other weapons for self-defense.
AB 1127 is similarly justified because the firearms it restricts are designed in a manner that facilitates dangerous use by criminals who take advantage of technological advances. These pistols can be “readily converted” into machine guns by nearly anyone with a simple pistol converter. Pistols converted into machine guns with pistol converters have been used in mass shootings, and the number of pistol converters recovered in crimes recently has skyrocketed, particularly in California.
… Now that criminals are relying on new technology to exploit design flaws in certain semiautomatic pistol models to convert them into machine guns, the Legislature has reacted to address this dangerous use in the same way that legislatures historically have. Throughout our Nation’s history, “[w]hen criminals took advantage of technological advances in weapons, legislatures acted to restrict an especially dangerous use of those weapons.”
Restricting a dangerous “use” of a weapon is far different than prohibiting the sale of those arms altogether.
Think about the implications of Bonta’s argument for a second. Many semi-automatic rifles can be illegally converted to fire full auto through the use of an auto sear. Virtually every semi-automatic firearm with a detachable magazine could be equipped by criminals with “large capacity” magazines that are illegal in California. What Bonta characterizes as a narrow restriction on a small number of handguns is actually the opening salvo in an attack that could render almost every semi-automatic firearm illegal to sell or possess… at least if the courts adopt his point of view.
Glocks are in common use for lawful purposes. They are protected by the Second Amendment, even if criminals can illegally convert them to fire full auto or misuse them in carjackings, armed robberies, and murders. Technology might have advanced to the point that criminals can more easily convert them, but the California legislature didn’t act to restrict an especially dangerous use of striker-fired pistols. It banned their sale outright, restricting ordinary and lawful uses of those pistols too.
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