The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit Wednesday taking aim at California’s ban on Glock pistols the day it was slated to take effect.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB1127 into law in October 2025, making California the first state to ban the popular pistol. The lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, targets both AB1127 and California’s “Unsafe Handgun Law,” and comes one day after Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta rejected a proposal to avoid litigation in a two-page letter to Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon.
“The Second Amendment is a sacred right belonging to all Americans, even those in California. California cannot ban the most popular type of handgun in America,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a Wednesday release announcing the lawsuit. “We will work to stop this blatant trampling of our rights by the California government to protect the rights of lawful gun owners.”
“The Civil Rights Division will defend law-abiding citizens from states that seek to disarm them illegally,” Dhillon added in the release, which the Daily Caller News Foundation was referred to by a DOJ spokesperson when reached for comment. “This lawsuit is yet another example of this Justice Department enforcing the Second Amendment by protecting citizens against unconstitutional state regulation of firearms.”
California Rifle and Pistol Association President C.D. Michel said he was “thrilled” to hear about the lawsuit.
“We’re pleased that they recognize that this is a problem and that they have much more authority to rein this stuff in, then they can get a lot more out of a lawsuit than the CRPA can,” Michel told the DCNF. “They can get a consent decree, ongoing reporting, you know, because there’s a pattern and practice of the state legislature passing these laws, which are basically a pretense for just trying to limit the choices that people have when they’re trying to get a gun that’s right for them.”
California has some of the most stringent gun-control laws in the United States, according to prominent anti-Second Amendment organizations like Everytown and Giffords Law Center.
The Civil Rights Division also filed suit against Virginia’s ban on modern semiautomatic firearms Wednesday, seeking to invalidate the measure Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed into law on May 14.
Bonta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
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