California Gov. Gavin Newsom has a major decision to make and it’s steeped in pure politics. He’s got a bill to consider that would ban striker-fired handguns – just like the one he was gifted by Shawn Ryan when he appeared on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast.

The governor prides himself on being the strongest gun control governor in the country and has never seen a policy to restrict Second Amendment rights that he didn’t love. Who can forget his ill-fated media ploy in 2023 to export California-style gun control to the rest of the country through the introduction of a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? That included a kitchen sink grab-bag of policies that included raising the minimum age to buy a firearm by three years, implementing universal background checks and a federal gun registry and banning Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs), among other provisions.

The governor claimed his proposed amendment “leaves the Second Amendment unchanged” and “respects America’s gun-owning tradition.” If you believe that, I’ve got a Golden Gate Bridge to sell you.

Now that California legislators have sent a bill to his desk, will his signature enact one of the most restrictive handgun bans in history and risk future presidential aspirations, or will he let the bill die and draw the ire of his gun control activist political base?

The clock is ticking for Gov. Newsom.

Handgun Ban

California Assembly Bill 1127 (AB 1127) passed the state Senate and, through some serious political gymnastics, the legislature suspended the rules to remain in session on a weekend and past the scheduled end of session deadline just so they could send the bill to the governor’s desk to await his possible signature.

AB 1127 seeks to ban the sale of striker-fired pistols that criminals are capable of illegally altering and modifying by affixing an already illegal “machinegun conversion device” (MCDs) to illegally manufacture a machinegun. The bill is set to take effect July 1, 2026, if signed by Gov. Newsom.

The bill essentially bans the most commonly owned types of handguns available to regular law-abiding Californians. Cam Edwards at Bearing Arms noted the bill language requires that handgun makers must be “California compliant,” thus making it all but impossible to purchase a striker-fire handgun.

“In my opinion, the amendment is a cheap gimmick to make the anti-gun politicians who voted in favor of this ban appear reasonable, because most folks have no clue about the ins-and-outs of California’s interconnected gun control schemes,” Edwards wrote.

Does Gov. Newsom really want to own this extreme of a gun ban ahead of a likely presidential campaign? If he is “deeply respectful of the Second Amendment,” as he reassured Shawn Ryan on his podcast, is he at peace banning so many options of popular handguns that would no longer be available for law-abiding Californians to buy? That would include – for regular Californians – the same handgun that former Vice President Kamla Harris claimed to own when she was asked by Oprah Winfrey during the 2024 presidential campaign. The former vice president, of course, likely owns her firearm under a special carve out not available for most Californians.

The California governor might not be aware that of the more than 26.2 million new first-time gun buyers over the past five years, the largest and fastest growing demographic of gun owners during that stretch was African American women who were largely buying striker-fired 9mm handguns, that make up a significant portion of the market. Is he going to stand by his record of banning the most-popular types of handguns purchased by the fastest-growing population of law-abiding gun owners in the country, who are also largely Democratic voters?

Additional Gun Control Awaits Governor

Unfortunately, AB 1127 isn’t the only gun control bill awaiting Gov. Newsom. Also on the menu is SB 704, which would institute required background checks on the purchase of stand-alone gun barrels. But California already bans the possession of unserialized, homebuilt firearms and “precursor parts,” so SB 704 appears to be an admission or a fix to an existing gun control law that lawmakers have realized didn’t work after all. That also becomes a slippery slope and it’s easy to foresee future laws to implement background checks for firearm “parts,” not just firearms themselves.

Also on the governor’s desk is AB 1078, which shifts California’s one-handgun-per-month gun rationing law to a three-guns-per-month gun rationing law. No surprises here, but it’s a callous move as a gun rationing law is still a gun rationing law. Federal courts already struck down the first rationing law as a violation of the Second Amendment. Should Gov. Newsom sign AB 1078 into law it will certainly be challenged in court on the same grounds as before – there is simply no history or tradition in America of rationing the exercise of the Second Amendment.

What Will the Governor Do?

Gov. Newsom is undoubtedly thinking ahead to a presidential campaign in 2028 and working through the political calculus of AB 1127. He’s never met a gun control bill he didn’t like – even if it meant he was on the losing end of immediate and successful court challenges, with taxpayers footing the bill, of course.

It’s highly likely the governor will sign the unconstitutional AB1127 gun ban bill into law. That move would certainly placate the gun control activists in his political base, including Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action and others. If he does make that move, it will be met swiftly by a legal challenge from NSSF.

The governor claimed he is “deeply respectful of the Second Amendment” when he spoke with Shawn Ryan. Enacting a wide-net handgun ban that would not reduce crime in his state – along with his long track record in the public domain and his attempt to enact his gun control 28th Amendment – one can’t help but hear those words and laugh.

Gov. Newsom may feel a lot of things about the Second Amendment – “respectful” is not one of them.Time will tell, and NSSF will be watching.

— Larry Keane

Lawrence G. Keane is the Senior Vice President and General Counsel for NSSF, The Firearm Industry Trade Association.