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July 29, 2025
Anti-Gun Politicians in California Have Their Eyes on ‘Popular’ Crime Guns
The California Department of Justice (Calif. DOJ) released a report that ignores what the data examined reveals and instead is being used by gun control groups to push antigun state legislators to pass a strict gun control bill that could have far-reaching consequences for law-abiding Californians.
The report is being used in a “name-and-shame” effort against GLOCK, Inc., and their popular handguns. Glock pistols are used by millions of law enforcement officers across the country and popularly with millions of law-abiding civilian gun owners.
California legislators, however, are using the report to add fuel to their fire in an all-out blitz against Glock and other semiautomatic handguns in the state by pointing to the fact that popularly owned handgun models are sometimes used in crime, just like popular cars are sometimes used in drunk driving accidents.
It’s another example of commonsense being in short supply among California anti-gun politicians.
Name And Shame
Calif. DOJ was required by previously enacted laws to collect data on firearms recovered at crime scenes and report on the findings, specifically to name the gun manufacturers behind the models found. Of course, the manufacturer most often has nothing to do with the sale of the firearm to a consumer by a neighborhood federally licensed firearm retailer obtains the ATF Form 4473 and processes the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verification before the buyer takes the gun home. In California, the process is even more burdensome. The buyer must fill out state-mandated paperwork that Calif. DOJ keeps on file, be fingerprinted by a state-licensed retailer, pay a fee to the state, wait 10 days, and pass a background check run by Calif. DOJ.
None of that matters, especially when the report finds its way to gun control “journalists” like The Smoking Gun’s Greg Lickenbocker. That’s Everytown for Gun Safety’s Bloomberg funded “independent” media arm whose stated mission is to “expose” the gun industry. Apparently, a math examine and basic data analysis are not required for the staff writers.
Lickenbocker took the Calif. DOJ data and reported that GLOCK handguns were recovered by law enforcement at nearly 19 percent (18.7 percent) crime scenes involving firearms. That is followed by other popularly-owed semiautomatic firearm brands like Smith & Wesson (11.6 percent) and Ruger (7.1 percent).
Lickenbrock states these manufacturers, firmly at the top of the Calif. DOJ list, show “strong” indicators that the companies’ “manufacture and sell crime guns,” as if handguns on display at retailers are labeled “crime gun.” Manufacturers don’t make and sell “crime guns.” They lawfully produce and sell constitutionally protected firearms. Manufacturers and retailers are not legally responsible when unaffiliated remote third parties, criminals, obtain firearms through illicit and illegal means in order to commit illegal acts of criminal violence. This is precisely why Congress passed the common sense, bipartisan Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that anti-gun zealots and politicians hate.
“Together, these five gun makers (including Taurus and Springfield Armory) produced over 47% of the crime guns recovered last year,” Lickenbrock wrote. The total percentages of the recovered firearms from 2022-2024 overall, compared to the above 2024 figures, are nearly identical. From 2022-2024, the percentage of recovered Glock’s was 18.2 percent, Smith & Wesson was 12 percent, and Ruger came in at 7.2 percent.
Writer Lucas Bennett took apart Lickenbrock’s “journalism” and summarized the flawed article succinctly. “Glock, Smith & Wesson, and Ruger aren’t only giants in law enforcement, they’re also among the most widely used options for responsible civilian gun owners,” Bennett wrote. “This is not evidence of criminal behavior on the part of the companies. Rather, it is evidence of the mere fact that the most commonly owned firearms are also most likely to be stolen or used illicitly not that manufacturers are redistributing arms to criminals.” Lickenbrock’s argument amounts to saying Ford cars are most often used in drunk driving accidents to insinuate that Ford purposefully sells cars to drunk drivers.
Gun Control Fuel
It’s no surprise to watch as antigun politicians in The Golden State use the report to go after lawful and highly-regulated firearm manufacturers in their attempts to restrict the Second Amendment rights of Californians even more than they currently do.
Cal Matters reported on the developments, writing “California’s Legislature is poised to ban the sale of one of the most popular types of handguns, like the one owned by arguably the state’s most recognizable Democrat, Kamala Harris.”
Democratic lawmakers are using Assembly Bill 1127 as a way to ban popular GLOCK handguns and other similar striker-fired handgun models. They don’t come out and say the bill targets GLOCK or other manufacturers by name. Their bill is written, though, in a highly specified way that impact GLOCK firearms and other popular striker-fired models, too.
“The bill aims to prohibit gun shops from selling new Glock-brand handguns and various off-brand imitators, because the guns can become fully automatic if a criminal inserts a converter, commonly known as a “Glock switch,” into the weapon,” Ryan Sabalow reported. “The switches can be made illegally on a 3D printer.”
That’s the key here – illegally converting a legal firearm into an illegal one is illegal. It also has nothing to do with the manufacturer. It would be akin to legislation that bans Honda vehicles because they are commonly involved in incidents of drunk driving and where an illegal after-market accessory was illegally added to the vehicle.
AB 1127 is moving fast and could receive final approval by the state’s Democratically-controlled anti-gun legislature any day now. Reports suggest Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom “hasn’t said” if he’d sign the bill into law but the governor has never met a gun control proposal he didn’t salivate over.
Federal Push
It’s not just the anti-gun politicians in California pushing to ban GLOCK’s and other similar models. From the West Coast to the East Coast, gun control activists are celebrating a federal proposal to do the same in Washington, D.C.
Two of the staunchest gun control supporters in Congress introduced companion bills in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate that would punish lawful and highly-regulated federal firearms licensees (FFLs) for the crimes committed by criminals ignoring the laws to cause harm.
U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) introduced H.R. 4198 in the House while U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) introduced the companion S. 2192 in the upper chamber. Similar to the existing law in California behind the released Calif. DOJ report, the bills would require the U.S. Attorney General to make publicly available a list of firearm retailers with a high number of short so-called “time-to-crime” firearm traces following the investigation of a criminal act and to prohibit federal departments and agencies from contracting with those businesses.
NSSF staunchly opposes these bills as even the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) states that a firearm retailer that is contacted in a firearm trace does not mean that the retailer is complicit in a crime. NSSF recently confirmed that ATF’s Demand 2 program, abused by gun control groups and their aligned media arms like Lickenbrock’s The Smoking Gun, is ending.
Antigun politicians already have a stranglehold on California and the Second Amendment. The anti-GLOCK bill is moving quickly and could become law soon. It’s another example of antigun activists attacking the lawful firearm industry and the rights of law-abiding Californians while ignoring the criminals who are the ones causing problems.
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