This is the last week of the 2026 legislative session in California, and anti-gun Democrats are now one step away from sending a major gun control bill to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
On Monday, the California Assembly approved SB 948, which would expand the requirements for a Firearm Safety Certificate (FSC) to include a four-hour training course and a live-fire test. A FSC is required to purchase or acquire any firearm in the state, and right now the process consists of paying a $25 fee and passing a 30-question, multiple-choice and true/false written exam. If SB 948 becomes law, however, almost anyone who wants to purchase a firearm would, starting on January 1, 2029, have to demonstrate completion of a "training course no less than 4 hours in length that, among other things, includes instruction on firearm safety and handling and live-fire shooting exercises on a firing range."
That live fire exercise is supposed to be a "demonstration by the applicant of safe handling of firearms and basic firearm shooting proficiency," though at the moment the bill doesn't offer any specific guidelines for what shooting proficiency looks like. Instead, California's Department of Justice will come up with that standard after the bill has been signed into law.
There's an exemption in the bill for those with a concealed carry license. Those permits require an even longer training course and live-fire test, and in some locales also cost upwards of $2,000.
The Assembly made some minor amendments to SB 948, and now the upper chamber has to concur with those changes. If that happens, SB 948 will be sent on to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will almost certainly sign it into law.
If that does happen, the impact of SB 948 will be significant. There's the cost of the four-hour training course, which will probably be somewhere around $100. Then there's the issue of range access. Many of the more populous counties have either no ranges at all or just a few commercial ranges, which means new gun owners could easily end up traveling an hour or more just to find a range where they can do the live-fire portion of the training class.
This also adds in an even longer wait for purchases. California already has a 10-day waiting period on firearms, but if SB 948 becomes law folks will have to wait for a spot in a class to open up before they can even begin the process of purchasing a gun.
None of this is even remotely constitutional, of course. California might try to claim that these requirements are just part of commercial transactions of firearms, which the Supreme Court has suggested are presumptively constitutional, but a Firearm Safety Certificate is required for almost all acquisitions, including gifts. I think that makes this more than just a condition on a commercial sale, as well as a "meaningful constraint" on the acquisition of a firearm.
The Ninth Circuit has also held that acquiring a firearm is part and parcel of the right to keep and bear them, so it will be up to California to prove that the provisions of SB 948 have longstanding and widespread historical analogues. I'm sure the state will argue that this is a "shall issue" system akin to getting a concealed carry license, but it is far broader than that. It applies to both handguns and long guns, and to guns kept in the home, not just those carried in public for lawful purposes.
SB 948 may not survive a court challenge, but I don't think the anti-gunners in the state legislature are all that concerned about its long-term legal prospects. They think they've found a new way to impede the exercise of our Second Amendment rights, and at this point I"d be shocked if the Senate doesn't go along with the minor revisions made by the Assembly.
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