Bill of Insanity

By Colin Gallagher, Author of Constitutional Crisis, Sept. 19, 2025

I don’t write often, and this is a case where the publication of this information here isn’t available elsewhere (and has been declined by several Second Amendment blogs and a site supported by user-generated content that normally might consider this kind of thing).

So here we go, writing about The Bills of Insanity. As those who have tracked this issue know, between January 2000 and September 2017, California passed and signed into law at least 20 significant statewide gun control bills, making it one of the most active states legislating on this issue during the period, with legislative momentum increasing from 2013 onward. By the end of 2018, more than a dozen additional gun laws were passed in California, with at least nine new pieces of legislation signed into law in 2018 alone, most taking effect January 1, 2019. At this point, nearly 35 unconstitutional proposals had become law, with only a few ever later being challenged in the courts.

But California’s Legislature and Governor were not done attacking the rights of the people. Between January 2019 and September 2025, California enacted at least 30 distinct new, unconstitutional statewide gun control laws, not counting those that have just been sent to the Governor listed below.

The bills becoming law are simply designed to target law-abiding citizens. The many gun control laws have no effect on crime and aren’t tailored to that: rather, they disproportionately impact and reduce law-abiding persons’ ability to exercise their right and defend themselves from California crime.

California’s violent crime rate, including firearm-involved crime, has increased overall from 2019 to 2025. While some counties have marked a temporary drop in some crime rates, violent crime including gun related crime is on the rise because of California’s numerous failed policies including its gun laws that send messages to criminals saying to them that “don’t worry there will be less armed citizens around here, and the State doesn’t support law abiding citizens defending themselves against criminals.”

Let’s consider the latest unconstitutional bills to get sent to the Governor. 

Recently, several more anti-2A bills have passed the California Legislature and been sent to the Governor’s desk for signature. As of the time this has been written (Sept 18, 2025), you can still contact Governor Newsom’s office to ask him to veto these bills, but it’s better you do so sooner rather than later (at https://www.gov.ca.gov/contact/).

These include: 

AB 1127 – The ban on many modern pistols (referred to as “the Glock ban,” but doesn’t only impact Glock pistols).

AB 1078 – Purchase limits for firearms (three per month, despite a limit recently being struck down by the courts)

AB 1263 – Even more self-manufacturing restrictions

SB 704 – Regulating barrels like firearms (would need to be transferred to an FFL – and background checked as of the date specified in the legislation)

This article will mainly go over AB 1127, although it will lightly touch on the barrel bill issues as well.

Late in the process for AB 1127, it was amended to add law enforcement exemptions (which didn’t help the actual problems the bill was riddled with), other exemptions, an extension/delay of the effective due date, and other changes. This bill should never have gotten so far, and the Legislature simply is using the bill to attack lawful gun owners, as with the numerous other bills signed into law in past years.

Some of the reasons this bill should be vetoed (which you can write to the Governor about on AB 1127):

Legal circumvention is worth discussion 

1. The bill, as passed by the Legislature due to its references to “back plates” and “cruciform

trigger bars” as something the requirements of the bill hinge on, could be legally physically circumvented. Anyone can just buy “cover plates” such as those found at NDZ or many other businesses across the country and then install them, lawfully asserting that AB 1127 does not apply to their pistol – because a cover plate as advertised isn’t a “back plate” as referred to in the text of the bill (nor would this create a “converter” which is prohibited by the bill’s language). Or possibly one could use the Ghost Inc. armorer’s plate, which has the same effect, or one could buy a whole self-defense trigger kit for any pistol affected to deal with the cruciform trigger bar language. These legal physical circumventions render the bill pointless and irrelevant at the time of transfer, although the Legislature has made the transfer process more expensive and time-consuming. Even if a future rule or law were to attempt to ban transfer of any weapon that has a “back plate,” “cover plate,” or “armorer plate,” then the ban could be circumvented by removing the plate before the time of the transfer, hence avoiding triggering any of the language that actually results in the ban. No plate (or no cruciform trigger bar) means no ban on transfer. Any plate would have to be given or sold separately, and it would need to be a standard, ordinary plate (nothing intended to override the gun’s normal firing mechanism).  Such a mechanism would be a logical way to circumvent AB 1127 legally – this would add expense for gun owners and create hassle trying to find FFLs that accept the transfers of items, even without a back plate, for example, but it would be a lawful avenue to continue generational ownership in a State whose legislators are tyrants.

The banning of generational transfer, part 1

2The bill (AB 1127) as written literally eliminates all forms of “giving” and “transfer” of any affected guns, barring them from transfer through a California FFL. It provides that “27595. (a) Except as provided in subdivision (c), commencing on July 1, 2026, a firearms dealer licensed pursuant to Sections 26700 to 26920, shall not sell, offer for sale, exchange, give, transfer, or deliver any semiautomatic machinegun-convertible pistol, as defined in Section 16885.” In part, what this does is it actually bans the only legal method for Intrafamilial transfer between a father and son, mother and daughter, etc., of legal rostered Glock pistols (and clones) when the

recipient is 18 to 20 years old and one of the parties is outside of the State of California. (Under existing law, this process would involve an intrafamilial transfer from being filled out on CFARS, and an FFL would need to receive the firearm from the person gifting/sending the firearm. Under AB 1127, this sole remaining legal option for Intrafamilial transfer for these interstate scenarios involving adults from 18 to 20 as the recipients would cease to exist (there would be no legal exploration or avenue here going forward for that circumstance) and young adults in those circumstances would have no legal method of pistol transfer, unless the party outside California were to enter California and they were then to conduct the transaction purely over CFARS, which provides a lawful method for transfer to the young adult that utilizes the State system but not a private licensed dealer.) The “private party to private party” exemption with FFL indicated in AB 1127 wouldn’t apply here because of another section of California law that bans FFLs from processing people under 21 except in specific, limited instances. While the minority generally extends to age 18 (a person is an adult at age 18 and can purchase arms or receive a firearm by transfer), California Penal Code Section 27510 prohibits a licensed California firearm dealer (“FFL”) from delivering or transferring possession of a pistol (handgun) to anyone under the age of 21. This means that California’s law on Intrafamilial transfers coupled with California’s current CFARS process (which does not utilize FFLs unless one of the parties is out of state) is the ONLY legal way a young adult from 18 to 20 years of age can come into possession of a pistol: 1) by being the recipient of it as a gift and 2) completing the CFARS process (and registering and paying a fee) within 30 days of the gift. AB 1127 expressly bans these family transfers when one party is out of state but oddly leaves the door open if the out of state party to the transaction were to come to California (or if both father and son were in California already and if the son were 18 or older and has his Firearm Safety Certificate, in which case he could still be gifted a Glock by family transfer despite AB 1127’s prohibition (and the son could complete the transfer on CFARS), since neither the father nor the son are dealers in this scenario and the prohibition in AB 1127 is focused on prohibition of applicable transfers that today occur through a dealer, but under the bill would be prohibited for dealers to perform). But this is only true if the father and son are both in California at the time the pistol is gifted. Rather than fixing the legal problem, California has made the issues associated with allowable family transfers more complex and labyrinthine. This is the most poorly thought-out law, or more likely, it was done intentionally to frustrate and confuse people.

Even more ban on generational transfer

3. For the same reason as above, because the bill disallows the acts of “exchange, give, or transfer” involving an FFL – conveyance actions leading to transfers as a result of trust administration also will be prohibited by AB 1127. Therefore, even after you have died, that which you had directed in your trust won’t be able (in California) to go to your heirs if it is a pistol as defined under AB 1127. And while one could argue that there exists a intrafamilial exemption under California Penal Code Section 27875, this will not help you if you are trying to transfer their pistol in a trust to someone not in their family after you die (since non-family transfers from trust require a FFL, and AB 1127 bans such transfers nor will it help you if the State decides to block the trust transfer to your family – your surviving family would be able to get it cleared, but only after going to a court (as the State is trying to ban every class of modern arm from ownership gradually).

There are huge constitutional problems here, but I have encouraged my friends and associates

to write to Gavin Newsom to ask for a veto of this awful bill. Further notes: There would be literally millions of already rostered and already legally owned pistols affected – including, but not limited to:

Glock 17 Gen3 (9mm

Glock 19 Gen3 (9mm)

Glock 26 Gen3 (9mm)

Glock 34 Gen3 (9mm)

Glock 22 Gen3 (.40 S&W)

Glock 23 Gen3 (.40 S&W)

Glock 27 Gen3 (.40 S&W)

Glock 35 Gen3 (.40 S&W)

Glock 21 Gen3 (.45 ACP)

Glock 30 Gen3 (.45 ACP)

Glock 36 Gen3 (.45 ACP)

Glock 20 Gen3 (10mm)

Glock 29 Gen3 (10mm)

Glock 31 Gen3 (.357 SIG)

Glock 32 Gen3 (.357 SIG)

Glock 33 Gen3 (.357 SIG)

Glock 37 Gen3 (.45 GAP)

Glock 38 Gen3 (.45 GAP)

Glock 39 Gen3 (.45 GAP)

California rostered Glock clones:

FMK 9C1 Gen3 (multiple roster variants, Glock-style internals)

Shadow Systems DR920 (recently rostered, direct Glock Gen3 clone)

Lest one think it is a Gen3 issue, the above are just those currently legal and on roster in California, accounting for millions of pistols. If at some point California were to allow various generations of Glock pistols on the roster, which the Legislature clearly is not intending to do, it should be known that all generations of Glock pistols — including Gen1, Gen2, Gen3, Gen4, and Gen5 -: have a back plate and utilize a cruciform trigger bar as an integral part of their Safe Action firing system, unless replaced with something like the Timney Alpha Competition trigger which removes the OEM cruciform design. So of course, anyone with a rostered Glock pistol will start looking for trigger kits (to circumvent AB 1127), and I suspect the California legislature’s next thing to ban will be triggers. Talk about getting triggered. As a result, law-abiding gun owners with what are now rostered guns are going to be adding arguably less safe kits to them eventually just to legally circumvent California law, because that is the position California puts law-abiding gun owners in, due to AB 1127 and similar proposals.

I do not think a substantial number of so-called ghost guns/polymer 80s, etc., would be impacted (even though they are also targets of this bill) because anyone can do their build to legally circumvent the language of this law now that the legislators have made clear that it hinges on back plate presence or something called “cruciform trigger bar.”  It will not be long before a rapid circumvention is made. Apart from the bill being unconstitutional, it is just a horrible bill and should be vetoed.

Barrels and SB 704

Regarding SB 704, which would create background checks and require pickup at FFL for barrels instead of allowing you to have them shipped to your home as people do now, If SB 704 becomes law by Governor’s signature and then it os forced to have same treatment as firearms for barrels (and probably every other part eventually) it would reduce revenue since most firearm owners would just wait for their next trip to Nevada and get their replacement parts that way. It would also reduce safety since legal gun owners would buy necessary and appropriate replacements less due to the astounding cost that California is creating.

Californians should also contact President Trump to ask him to call on Congress to pass H.R. 38 and put it on the President’s desk for signature so we can have true nationwide reciprocity. Liberty and your rights are worth the battle. Thank you.