California Legislature is Trying to Ban Your Glock

The California Legislature has a bill up Tuesday to BAN any new purchase of all models of Glock handguns.

What can we say, other than to share Gun Owners of California’s assessment:

GLOCK BAN BILL: All Politics – Zero Safety

Democrats call the Glock a “machingun-convertible pistol.”

Who is leading the charge to ban the well-loved Glock?

Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), who calls the Glock, the “DIY Machine Gun Loophole,” is the author of Assembly Bill 1127, along with Assembly Members Mike Gipson and Buffy Wicks, and Coauthors Assembly Members Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, Marc Berman, Issac Bryan, Damon Connolly, Mark González, Ash Kalra, Liz Ortega, Cottie Petrie-Norris, and Sharon Quirk-Silva.

According to the bill’s author Assemblyman Gabriel, “As parents and lawmakers, we refuse to stand idly by while our schools and communities are being threatened by illegal machine guns. This commonsense legislation will ensure that the gun industry is held accountable and that we are doing everything possible to protect our communities from mass shootings.”

Assemblyman Gabriel and fellow gun control supporters are literally redefining semi-automatic pistols as “convertible.”

So, it’s about “mass shootings,” according to Assemblyman Gabriel. Notably, Assemblyman Gabriel says nothing about the people shooting the guns. By his logic, SUVs kill, knives kill, airplanes kill, even hot air balloons kill – not the people operating them.

“The Glock pistol is America’s Gun. It has been rhapsodized by hip-hop artists and coveted by cops and crooks alike,” Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun says. “Created in 1982 by Gaston Glock, the pistol arrived in America at a fortuitous time. Law enforcement agencies had concluded that their agents and officers, armed with standard six-round revolvers, were getting “outgunned” by drug dealers with semi-automatic pistols; they needed a new gun. With its lightweight plastic frame and large-capacity spring-action magazine, the Glock was the gun of the future. You could drop it underwater, toss it from a helicopter, or leave it out in the snow, and it would still fire. It was reliable, accurate, lightweight, and cheaper to produce than Smith and Wesson’s revolver. (This is a marvelous book).

The Assembly Floor Analysis claims:

“The increased prevalence of automatic weapons across the nation is deeply concerning. We all agree that machine guns have no place in our communities, yet a select few gun manufacturers refuse to address a deadly design flaw with their guns that allows them to be converted into dangerous automatic weapons. Assembly Bill 1127 seeks to protect communities from mass shootings and gun violence by preventing easy conversion of semi-automatic firearms to fully automatic machine guns. Most handguns designs don’t have this flaw, and this legislation will ensure the limited number of gun manufacturers who refuse to address this begin to do their part to keep deadly automatic weapons off our streets.”

Notice the language:

“Mass shootings” and “gun violence.” This is from the same people who support emptying out California’s prisons.

It’s the gun’s fault.

No one could really be that stupid, right?

Gun Owners of California weighs in on AB 1127:

What few comments Gabriel has made about his bill have been short on facts and big on lies.  In comments to Sacramento’s ABC 10, Gabriel asserts that the “firearm industry has known for decades about a vulnerability in some designs rendering them readily convertible into automatic weapons.”  In testimony before both the Assembly Public Safety and Judiciary Committees he went even further, outright lying that the industry “has done nothing” to fix the problem.

Not true.  The cold, hard truth is that Glock’s Gen 4 and 5 designs have been modified, but California has refused to allow them to be added to the state’s roster of safe firearms. This is not only hypocritical but it is politically biased, further demonstrating that this legislation is not about safety but about incremental firearm prohibitions.

ABC 10 reported that this legislative effort comes after “converted” weapons were used in several mass shootings, including a 2022 incident where six people were killed and 12 wounded, in what police say was a shootout between rival Sacramento gangs.

Rival gangs.

The Globe reported on the 2022 shootings a block from the State Capitol:

Six people were killed and 10 were wounded in what was initially called a “mass shooting” in downtown Sacramento in April, turning several blocks of the Capitol city into a massive crime scene, the Globe reported. It was later revealed that it was a gang-on-gang shooting.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s reaction was to blame guns. “Rising gun violence is the scourge of our city, state and nation, and I support all actions to reduce it,” he said on Twitter.

If the driver of a Chevy Suburban ran down these 16 people, the media would report “SUV kills 6, injures 10.” Would Mayor Steinberg blame SUV violence?

Governor Gavin Newsom wasn’t any better: “Sadly, we once again mourn the lives lost and for those injured in yet another horrendous act of gun violence. Jennifer and I send our heartfelt condolences to the family, friends, and to the wider community impacted by this terrible tragedy.”

The guns didn’t shoot 16 people, the perpetrators did.

In 2022, The Globe also reported that 11 California cities made the 100 most dangerous cities in the country list for 2021, and listed the most dangerous/violent cities in the state based on FBI data.

It’s not because of the guns.

In 2021, District Judge Roger T. Benitez threw out California’s 32-year ban on assault weapons, while also clarifying the deliberate and incorrect use of the label “assault weapon.” In the case of the AR-15, “AR” stands for “Armalite Rifle,” named after the company that developed it.

Benitez’s statement in his opinion says it all:

“Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment. Good for both home and battle, the AR-15 is the kind of versatile gun that lies at the intersection of the kinds of firearms protected under District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) and United States v Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). Yet, the State of California makes it a crime to have an AR15 type rifle. Therefore, this Court declares the California statutes to be unconstitutional.”

Judge Benitez also summed up the state’s gun control stance: “The State prefers a policy of residents not arming themselves with assault weapons, and for those who do, arresting residents.”

As Gun Owners of California explained:

“AB 1127 will simply punish legal firearm purchasers by limiting their choices while criminals will continue to operate without regard for the law. Ironically, California is now scrambling to fix a problem of its own making—blocking access to modern, safer handgun models and then blaming legal gun owners for the consequences. What’s more, the bill fails to acknowledge that nearly all semi-automatic pistols could theoretically be considered a “convertible pistol” making their definition overly broad and unenforceable.

GOC’s Sam Paredes has been far more outspoken in opposition on this bill than Gabriel has been in defense of this bad policy.  “It is a ban, because anyone else in the future who wants to purchase a Glock will not be allowed to do so without committing an egregious crime,” he said, “What the state of California needs to do is they need to focus on the criminal element, increasing the punishments for the misuse of any firearms or modifying any gun into an illegal configuration.”

“Every pro Second Amendment organization in the country finds this law to be egregious, a vile usurpation of the Second Amendment and everyone is planning on joining together to file a lawsuit of massive proportions against this bill,” Paredes said.

Paging Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel to the Constitutional Library of Congress for a long review of the Second Amendment.