The National Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and two individual plaintiffs have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the ban on Glock handguns signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom last Friday.
The complaint, filed in the Southern District of California, is pretty straightforward: California has banned the sale of guns that are in common use, and if § 27595(a), Californians will have no way to acquire them.
That is flagrantly unconstitutional. Heller itself held that “the handgun [is] the quintessential self-defense weapon” and “the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home.” As such, it necessarily follows that a ban on the sale of a particular type of popular handgun is unconstitutional.
California already bans many handgun models targeted by this law. This Court has held that these restrictions are likely unconstitutional because these handguns are “in common use.”
Undeterred, the State is now expanding its ban on “popular handguns designed for self-defense.” Plaintiffs respectfully request that this Court declare this expansion is no more constitutional than the original ban and enjoin § 27595(a)’s enforcement.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta will undoubtably respond by arguing that the Glock ban is about safety, and that the company could continue selling its Gen 3 models so long as it fundamentally changes its design so that it’s impossible to illegally modify them to fire full-auto through the use of a switch.
As we’ve previously pointed out though, CalDOJ typically views any design changes, no matter how minor, to be a new handgun model subject to review before it can be approved for sale. The reason why Gen 4 and Gen 5 models aren’t available for sale in California is that they lack some of the specific features required by the state, like a magazine disconnect mechanism that prevents the gun from firing once a magazine has been removed. The Gen 3 also lacks that feature, but has been grandfathered in to the state’s Handgun Roster.
If Glock were to bend the knee to California’s request, it could still result in CalDOJ banning the redesigned Gen 3. Granted, California Handgun Roster is already subject to a federal lawsuit, and as the complaint filed on Tuesday points out, the federal courts have already been skeptical about the constitutionality of the roster and its impact on the availability of other arms in common use.
In a sense, this lawsuit is about as simple as it gets. Even antigun courts upholding things like “assault weapon” bans concede that handguns are protected. So California’s ban in the most popular handguns should be an easy case.
Of course, this being the Ninth Circuit, nothing… pic.twitter.com/MnkA2Z6JNA
— SAF (@2AFDN) October 13, 2025
The switches that illegally modify Glocks are already prohibited under both California and federal law. If California succeeds in its theory that commonly-owned arms can be banned because they can be illegally modified into machineguns, that would take the sale of Glocks off the table, but it could also lead to additional prohibitions on semi-automatic long guns, which can also be illegally modified through the installation of an auto-sear.
And of course, what happens in California doesn’t stay in California when it comes to gun control bills. There’s already legislation that’s similar to AB 1127 sitting in the New York and Illinois legislatures, and we’re likely going to see other versions filed in blue states like Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington in the weeks to come.
The Heller decision took a complete ban on handguns off the table, so now the gun control lobby is adopting a piecemeal strategy. As the plaintiffs argue, that too should be foreclosed by Heller, but until the courts step in and smack down this flagrantly unconstitutional prohibition on commonly owned handguns the anti-gunners will keep using this tactic everywhere they can.
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