Transcription
Major breaking news as Har Dylan and the Trump Department of Justice have just threatened the state of California over their handgun roster and their ban on Glock related firearms. That's right. DOJ is coming to the rescue of Californians and their Second Amendment rights. We're going to break it down when we come right back.
Major breaking news. Hey folks, I'm Mark Smith, host of the Four Boxes Diner, proud American gun owner, constitutional attorney, member of the United States Supreme Court Bar and I'm proud to say the top voice of the Second Amendment in America. Thank you 2025 and 2026 Gun News Awards.
All right, so we have a major deal here. We have Harmony Dillon on behalf of the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Justice under the Trump administration is going to war with California over various legal rules associated with handguns, including their handgun ban on Glocks essentially, as well as their handgun roster. For those of you who don't know how it works is you cannot you cannot buy a handgun in California if the handgun is not on the California blessed roster. Clearly that is a version of a gun ban, but we'll get to that in one second.
Anyway, here is what Harmy Dillon just posted on behalf of the federal government on X. Check it out.
"Tick tock. Tick tock. On July 1st, California plans to impose an unconstitutional Glock ban. Today, I notified California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Abanta to drop the unconstitutional restrictions on law-abiding citizens' rights to purchase legal firearms before the ban goes into effect. Or we will sue. Stay tuned."
This is exactly right. And it is clearly DOJ is in the right. Keep in mind when it comes to a ban on Glocks, and we can break this down into geekier detail, but the bottom line is a ban on Glocks is unconstitutional for several reasons. The most obvious of which is that in 2008 the US Supreme Court in Heller literally said that handguns cannot be banned because they are in common use by Americans for lawful purposes. They reiterated that in the McDonald versus Chicago case. So Glock is obviously a modern semi-automatic handgun. It's not an automatic firearm or anything like that. And therefore, it is simply protected by Heller. You can't ban handguns. You can't ban Glocks as a subset. Period. Full stop.
Second, we do not measure and restrict my constitutional right to have a Glock or a handgun, your constitutional right to have a Glock or a handgun because some wackadoodle psychopathic nut job exercises what is a de facto heckler's veto by going out there and inserting some sort of a Glock switch in a gun, which in and of itself is a crime under, among other things, the National Firearms Act because you can't convert a semi-automatic rifle or semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic weapon. So if gang bangers in Chicago are using illegal items to convert a Glock or any other semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic firearm without the proper licenses, that is a federal crime. And because we do not, we do not in constitutional law prevent from exercising my right to free speech because someone misuses the right to free speech down the street. So too I should not lose my right to keep and bear arms because someone commits a crime down the street involving a gun.
And the only argument against these Glocks to say these Glocks should be banned is not because there's anything wrong with the Glocks themselves or the guns themselves or the Glock style firearms themselves. It's entirely because some people out there are putting in Glock switches and they are committing crimes doing so. It's not the problem is not the gun. It's not the Glock. It's not the design of the Glock. The most popular, one of the most popular handguns ever in American life. The problem is people committing crimes using something to convert a Glock into a fully automatic firearm. Again, that is not how the game gets played.
Lastly, of course, the number of Glocks in America are so ubiquitous, just Glocks alone, that any ban on Glocks almost certainly violates the common use because Glocks, just measured as Glocks, there's millions of Glock handguns in America. So, just looking at Glocks alone and Glock clones, if you will, those are more than in common use by Americans for lawful purposes. And as you know, and I've hammered this home over and over and over again because there's confusion here, but there shouldn't be if you follow the Four Boxes Diner. Remember, the common use test derives from the historical tradition of firearms regulation consisting of banning the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. And because that historical tradition of firearms regulation that gave rise to the, you can ban based on history, dangerous and unusual weapons, into something that's in common use. It's not a dangerous and unusual weapon because it's not unusual. Because all that gestalt of information falls under the historical tradition of firearms regulation, the burden of proof, the burden of proof is on the government to show that, for example, these Glocks are dangerous and unusual weapons because it's part of the history. And when it's part of the history, it means that the burden is on the government and there's no way the government can show that these Glocks are dangerous and unusual weapons because they're not. And the fact that someone can convert them into a fully automatic firearm doesn't make the Glock itself a problem any more than, you know, you can misuse a gun or a car or a knife. That doesn't make it a murder weapon just because you own a steak knife because some wackadoodle down the street used a steak knife similar to the one you own to commit a crime to commit a murder. That's absurd. That is not how constitutional rights work in the context of the Second Amendment or otherwise.
Now, let's also go on to take a look at what Harmy Dillon wrote in this very powerful letter to the state of California and then we'll get back to some further analysis about the handgun roster ban in one second. But let's take a look at what Harmy Dillon wrote. Check it out.
"Dear Governor Newsom and General Abanta, the Second Amendment guarantees the right of all citizens to keep and bear arms for self-defense. Signed Heller. Because handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense, a prohibition on their use is invalid. As you know, pursuant to California Penal Code, and there's a section here, as of July 1st, 2026, it will be illegal for California firearm dealers to sell certain semi-automatic pistols. This statute is commonly known as the Glock ban because it will ban the sale of virtually all Glock and Glock style pistols. California's ban on the sale of the most popular handgun in America violates the Second Amendment."
That's exactly right. And by the way, in addition to the points I just made as to why you cannot ban Glocks or Glock style semi-automatic handguns for the reason I just articulated, the right to acquire a firearm is a concomitant implicit right to the right to keep and bear arms. As I've written about extensively, you obviously cannot exercise the right to keep an arm, which means to possess or to bear an arm, which means to carry, if you can't acquire the gun in the first place, which means by necessity, we have a plain text Second Amendment right to acquire firearms. And one can look at many examples of this, but the easy example of this in my view is if you look at the Minneapolis Star case from the 1980s that says that an onerous tax on ink on the acquisition of ink violated the First Amendment right to free speech, even though the word ink does not appear in the text of the First Amendment. Because the way you exercise your right to free speech if you're, let's say, a newspaper or a publisher, is you need ink to buy to print your newspaper or your materials or your book, whatever it is. So a tax on ink, which the Supreme Court in Minneapolis Star said was unconstitutional under the First Amendment, even though the word ink does not appear in the text of the First Amendment. So too, even though the word acquisition or procurement or purchase does not appear in the text of the Second Amendment, obviously, the right to keep and bear arms presupposes your ability to acquire such an arm. And if you put restrictions on the ability of ordinary law-abiding citizens to acquire such guns, that indeed implicates the plain text of the Second Amendment with the conduct you want to engage in, i.e., acquire a handgun.
Now, it gets better than that. Harmy Dillon in this powerful letter goes on to talk in detail about how the handgun roster, which says that you cannot buy a handgun in California unless California has allowed the handgun onto the roster, how that also violates the Second Amendment as well. Here's what she says next in this letter to Gavin Newsom and Rob Bont. Check it out.
"To be sold at retail in California, a handgun must be listed on the state's official handgun roster. To be listed on the handgun roster, certain handguns must have a chamber load indicator, a magazine disconnect mechanism, and until recently, the ability to transfer microscopic characters representing the gun's make, model, and serial number on a shell casing fired by the gun, commonly referred to as microstamping capability. As a result of these requirements, no new handguns were added to the handgun roster between 2013 and 2023, leading the court in Bolan versus Bont to hold as follows: that Californians, this is what they held, this is what the court said, Californians have the constitutional right to acquire and use state-of-the-art handguns to protect themselves. They should not be forced to settle for decade-old models of handguns to ensure that they remain safe inside or outside the home. But unfortunately, the statute's requirements do exactly that. Those requirements are unconstitutional and their enforcement must be preliminarily enjoined."
That's good stuff. But it gets even better. The injunction entered in Bolan is stayed pending appeal and the state's legislature recently deferred the microstamping requirement until January 1st, 2028. Nevertheless, for the reasons stated by the district court, these provisions of the handgun roster statute violate, violate the Second Amendment. And this letter is to inform you that as the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, I have authorized the filing of a complaint in federal district court against the state of California. The complaint will allege that the Glock ban and the handgun roster statute violate the state's citizens' Second Amendment rights by making it a crime to acquire constitutionally protected arms from firearms dealers and that state law enforcement agency's implementation of the prohibition and the threat of criminal prosecution, i.e., criminal enforcement, constitute a pattern or practice of law enforcement misconduct.
That's right. Law enforcement misconduct. Powerful stuff. But then she goes on and says, "This is what I expect from California or I'm going to sue your butt."
"The Department of Justice will consider deferring the filing of our lawsuit for a short period of time if the state of California is willing to enter pre-suit negotiations in an effort to resolve this matter. Although the specific provisions are open to discussion, a resolution must at a minimum require the state of California one, immediately cease enforcement of all laws identified above, two, acknowledge the unconstitutionality of these laws, and three, agree to enter into a court-enforceable consent decree permanently enjoining the state from violating its citizens' constitutional rights through these or any similar laws."
A powerful letter from Harmy Dillon, the head of the Civil Rights Division over there at the Department of Justice. And of course, you know, the excellent lawyers there in the Second Amendment Rights Unit, including Barry Arrington, uh, who we very much like. So, yes, great stuff. This is clearly the case.
But the handgun roster is a handgun ban. Why? Because if it's on the roster, it means that there's a ban on all handguns in America off the roster, outside the roster. So even though you may focus on the handguns on the handgun roster, by excluding by force of law handguns commonly owned by Americans for lawful purposes everywhere else in America, those are excluded from the California handgun roster. That means the roster law is in effect a handgun ban on commonly owned handguns and that would be verboten under the Heller and McDonald precedent and under the Second Amendment as well.
So, all these laws violate the Second Amendment, and it's great to see Harmy Dillon as the head of the Civil Rights Division over there at the Trump Department of Justice, uh, taking this head-on and fighting the good fight for our constitutional rights. So, with that said, this is exciting news. We'll keep you apprised as things develop. And again, thank you for tuning in here at the Four Boxes Diner. Uh, make sure you follow me on X @FourBoxes. Don't forget to subscribe, both YouTube and Rumble, and I'll talk to you again real soon here at the Four Boxes Diner.
>> Orders up. Table 2A.