California's Glock Ban and the Coming Judicial Showdown

AP Photo/John Locher, File

There's a lot to take issue with regarding California's ban on Glocks and similar firearms. Honestly, with a law like that, which is as screwed up as a football bat, detailing each and every problem would probably take an entire book. It's a terrible law with a lot of terrible motivations.

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And it's a law that was always going to face judicial scrutiny. 

I mean, no one believed for one minute that Second Amendment groups were going to let that one slide, right?

But it's also entirely possible that the scrutiny is exactly what was intended.

California’s new ban on Glock-style handguns comes as lower courts have disagreed on the limits of the Second Amendment. This California law, which targets one of the most common handguns in America, is widely seen as a deliberate bid to trigger a federal court showdown. Recent rulings have already struck down several of California’s firearm restrictions, including bans on high-capacity magazines and mandates for specific handgun safety features. Newsom’s push for a 28th Amendment to take away this individual right has gained no traction, but it underscores how this battle extends beyond Sacramento. 

For gun rights advocates, Jaymes v. Bonta is more than a typical legal challenge; it’s a test case that could define the boundaries of permissible gun regulation for decades. A victory for the plaintiffs could restore access to Glock-style semi-automatics in California; a loss could embolden regulators nationwide to target other popular firearms. What began as a legislative fight in Sacramento is now poised to shape the future of American gun rights in the nation’s courts.
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In a lot of ways, this is similar to the ever-popular assault weapon bans. It's targeting a firearm because of its perception of danger.

However, as writer Susane Ellison notes earlier in the above-linked piece, this is basically guilt by design. While so-called assault weapons are supposedly dangerous in and of themselves, the Glock ban is about what third parties can do illegally to a Glock, with a device that's illegal to obtain, all because Glock doesn't want to change its proven design because of what criminals do.

So it goes beyond the issues with AR-15s and other modern sporting rifles.

If California is successful, anti-gunners will find reasons to attack just about every other make and model of firearm they can, not so much because of anything the guns are designed to do, but because of what some third-party might do with them.

This is essentially the same kind of "thinking" that led to lawsuits against gun manufacturers because criminals did something with a firearm, something that hasn't gone away, unfortunately.

Honestly, this challenge might be the most important Second Amendment case of our time. If California gets away with this, we're definitely going to see other such bans proposed throughout the nation, though probably not as extensively as anti-gunners might like. Still, for people who trust their lives to Glocks in other states, such a move could be troubling, especially should the pendulum swing and we get another gun-grabbing White House and Congress like we saw with The Big Guy and whoever was pulling the strings for those four years.

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