GLOCK BAN BILL: All Politics – Zero Safety

Why has Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D/Encino), author of legislation to essentially ban the sale of Glock handguns in California – kept such a low profile about a bill of such significance? Why is he not publicly pounding his chest that his AB 1127 would bust the door open for future gun bans?  Surely a bill of such consequence would pop up somewhere on his socials, but there is absolutely nothing. Is there no pride in something that is so distinctly punitive and politically biased?

In short, AB 1127 is a bad, bad bill.  It bans so-called “convertible pistols” and redefines semi-auto pistols as “convertible” simply because they could hypothetically be modified. No question about it – such legislation sets up a dangerous precedent for other firearm prohibitions down the road.

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, outfight 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.

Over 100 bullets were fired — in what was described as rapid-fire bursts — during the shootout.  Given Assemblyman Gabriel’s concern for the “gun violence epidemic”, maybe he convened some sort of task force comprised of a bunch of street thugs and gang members to discuss “solutions”.  Maybe they all agreed a brand new bill was needed to compel them to obey the law and not convert a firearm into a machine gun.  You know – we need a new law to make something that is illegal – illegaler!

Indeed, it is already federally illegal to own unregistered machine guns, plus the sale of pistol switches is already prohibited in California.

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.”

AB 1127 has passed out of the Assembly’s policy committees, and if passed by the Senate and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, Paredes says he and other gun rights organization leaders will be filing an immediate legal challenge.

“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.

For an additional on-point analysis of AB 1127, check out the story in Survival World HERE.