The Department of Justice has put California on the clock. Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, has formally notified Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta that unless the state abandons two of its handgun restrictions before they tighten, the United States will sue. The targets are California’s so-called Glock ban, set to take effect July 1, 2026, and the state’s handgun roster, the Unsafe Handgun Act regime that has frozen new models out of California gun stores for years. Both, in my judgment, are flatly unconstitutional, and the Civil Rights Division is right to say so.
The Ultimatum
Dhillon’s message was characteristically direct. “Tick tock. Tick tock,” she wrote. “On July 1st, California plans to impose an unconstitutional Glock ban. Today, I notified California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Bonta to drop the unconstitutional restrictions on law-abiding citizens’ rights to purchase legal firearms before the ban goes into effect, or we will sue. Stay tuned.”
The accompanying letter spells out the legal theory and the demand. The Department, Dhillon wrote, has authorized a complaint alleging that “the Glock ban and the handgun roster statute violate the state’s citizens’ Second Amendment rights by making it a crime to acquire constitutionally protected arms from firearms dealers.” The DOJ will defer filing only if California enters pre-suit negotiations and agrees, at minimum, to cease enforcement, acknowledge the laws’ unconstitutionality, and accept a court-enforceable consent decree permanently enjoining their enforcement. Those are serious terms, and they are warranted by serious constitutional defects.
Heller Already Decided This
The first defect is the most basic. In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Supreme Court held that handguns cannot be banned because they are in common use by Americans for lawful purposes. The Court reaffirmed that holding two years later in McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), incorporating the right against the states. A Glock is a modern semi-automatic handgun, not a machine gun. It is precisely the kind of arm Heller protects. As Dhillon’s letter puts it, “California’s ban on the sale of the most popular handgun in America violates the Second Amendment.”
The defense California will offer is that criminals install illegal “Glock switches” to convert these pistols into automatic weapons. That conduct is already a federal felony. A Glock switch turns a pistol into a machine gun under the National Firearms Act, and its possession is prohibited under 18 U.S.C. § 922(o). The misconduct of a criminal down the street cannot extinguish my right to acquire a lawful firearm, any more than one person’s abuse of speech silences the newspaper next door. We do not surrender constitutional rights to a heckler’s veto. The fault lies with the offender, not the instrument. A Glock is no more a machine gun than a steak knife is a murder weapon.
The Roster Is a Ban by Another Name
The handgun roster works the same constitutional harm through bureaucratic means. Under California’s Unsafe Handgun Act, a pistol may not be sold at retail unless it appears on a state-approved list, and to qualify it must carry a chamber load indicator, a magazine disconnect mechanism, and microstamping capability. The practical result is exclusion: no new handgun was added to the roster between 2013 and 2023. A list that bars the commonly owned handguns sold everywhere else in America is a handgun ban dressed in administrative clothing, forbidden under Heller and McDonald.
A federal court has already said so. In Boland v. Bonta, No. 8:22-cv-01421 (C.D. Cal.), Judge Cormac J. Carney preliminarily enjoined the roster requirements, writing:
Californians have the constitutional right to acquire and use state-of-the-art handguns to protect themselves. They should not be forced to settle for decade-old models of handguns to ensure that they remain safe inside or outside the home. But unfortunately, the statute’s requirements do exactly that. Those requirements are unconstitutional and their enforcement must be preliminarily enjoined.
The Ninth Circuit has stayed that injunction pending appeal, and the legislature has deferred microstamping to January 1, 2028. The constitutional infirmity remains.
The Right to Acquire
There is one more point worth pressing, because California will argue the Constitution protects only keeping and bearing, not buying. That argument fails on the text. You cannot keep an arm you may not acquire, and you cannot bear one you were never permitted to buy. The right to acquire is implicit in, and inseparable from, the right to keep and bear.
The First Amendment supplies the analogy. In Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, 460 U.S. 575 (1983), the Supreme Court struck down a tax on paper and ink even though the word “ink” appears nowhere in the First Amendment, because a newspaper cannot print without it. So too here. The words “acquire” and “purchase” do not appear in the Second Amendment, but the right to keep and bear arms presupposes the ability to obtain them. Burden the acquisition, and you burden the right itself.
That is why this notice matters. It is good to see Harmeet Dhillon and the lawyers of the DOJ Second Amendment Section, including Barry Arrington, taking this fight head-on. California has until July 1st to choose its course.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.