California Banned Glock Sales on July 1. On August 4, SAF, NRA and FPC Filed to Stop It

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

SAN DIEGO, CA — A coalition of gun owners, retailers and Second Amendment organizations asked a federal judge on August 4, 2026, to block California’s ban on the commercial sale of Glock and Glock-style pistols, and the judge has set a hearing for September 4.

The motion for a preliminary injunction was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California under case number 20-cv-2190-DMS-DEB, with Lana Rae Renna as the first-named plaintiff. The defendants are California Attorney General Robert Bonta and Allison Mendoza, director of the California Department of Justice Bureau of Firearms. The Honorable Dana M. Sabraw is set to hear argument at 1:30 p.m. on September 4, 2026. A preliminary injunction is simply a court order pausing a law while the case is litigated, so plaintiffs are not asking the judge to strike the statute yet. They are asking him to stop it from operating in the meantime.

The plaintiff group is deep. Individual Californians including Danielle Jaymes, Laura Schwartz, Michael Schwartz, Robert Macomber, Clint Freeman, John Klier, John Phillips, Cheryl Prince and Darin Prince are joined by retailers PWGG, L.P., North County Shooting Center, Inc., and Gunfighter Tactical, LLC, along with the Firearms Policy Coalition, San Diego County Gun Owners PAC, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the National Rifle Association.

The law at issue is AB 1127, authored by Assemblymember Gabriel and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 10, 2025, as Chapter 572. Read the enrolled text and the mechanics are narrower than the shorthand suggests, and broader in effect. On and after July 1, 2026, a licensed firearms dealer may not sell, offer for sale, exchange, give, transfer or deliver any semiautomatic “machinegun-convertible pistol,” which the bill defines as any semiautomatic pistol with a cruciform trigger bar that can be readily converted by hand or with common household tools into a machinegun by the installation or attachment of a pistol converter. A “pistol converter” is defined as a device that replaces the backplate at the rear of the slide, interferes with the trigger mechanism, and thereby lets the pistol fire more than one shot with a single function of the trigger.

Note what the statute does not require. It does not require that a converter be present. The trigger for the sales ban is the geometry of the pistol itself, and the cruciform trigger bar is a defining feature of the Glock design and of pistols built on that platform. AB 1127 separately expands California’s definition of “machinegun” to include a machinegun-convertible pistol that is actually equipped with a converter, which folds it into the existing prohibition on manufacturing, selling, possessing or transporting a machinegun, a violation punishable as a felony. So the conduct everyone agrees is criminal was already criminal. What the new law adds is a ban on the retail sale of the unmodified pistol.

Dealer penalties escalate. A first violation draws a fine, a second draws a fine that may result in suspension or revocation of the dealer’s license and removal from state centralized lists, and a third is a misdemeanor that must result in revocation and removal.

The Second Amendment Foundation announced the challenge on October 13, 2025, three days after the signing, as Jaymes v. Bonta, and said it was joined by the NRA, FPC, a licensed retailer and two individual plaintiffs. SAF Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack tied the new law directly to California’s handgun roster. “Prior to AB 1127, Gen 3 Glock, and similar handguns built on the Glock platform, were available for commercial sale because they were grandfathered onto California’s handgun roster,” Sack said. “California is already subject to an injunction because the California Handgun Roster unconstitutionally bans handguns in common use for lawful purposes. Rather than heed the demands of the Second Amendment and their own courts, California lawmakers have responded by doubling down and expanding their handgun ban. We’ll see them in court.”

“Just as we’ve done in numerous other cases in the state, we will vigorously defend this unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment rights of Californians,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb.

The August motion was filed under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(d), the rule that lets a party bring in claims about events that happened after the original complaint was filed. In plain terms, the roster case was already on the docket, the state passed a new restriction while that case was pending, and the plaintiffs are litigating the new restriction inside the existing case rather than starting over.

The argument itself follows the familiar two-step. Plaintiffs contend Penal Code section 27595 implicates the Second Amendment because Glock pistols are “arms” covered by the plain text, and that once the text is implicated the burden shifts to California to show its ban fits the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation, which plaintiffs say the state cannot do. That is the framework the Supreme Court set out in Bruen. Plaintiffs also argue the remaining preliminary injunction factors favor them and ask the court to waive bond or require only nominal security, which is the money a party normally has to post to cover the other side’s losses if the injunction turns out to have been wrongly granted.

The sales ban took effect July 1, 2026. The motion to halt it was filed August 4. That means Californians walking into a gun store today are already living under the restriction the court will take up on September 4, and every week that passes is a week a common, widely owned handgun platform cannot be bought at retail in the state. That is not an abstraction for the shooter deciding on a first defensive pistol. It is a shrinking counter. Californians already work under one of the tightest firearms regimes in the country, and my California concealed carry guide covers the permit side of that picture.

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The fair caveats matter here. Everything above from the plaintiffs’ side is argument, not fact found by a court. California has not yet had its say on this motion in anything I can review, and Judge Sabraw has not ruled on any of it. The state will get its opportunity to defend the statute, and the September 4 hearing is where that happens.

I will continue tracking the motion for preliminary injunction and the September 4 hearing before Judge Sabraw in the Southern District of California.