California Wants to Add Ammo to Its Red Flag Grabs
California Wants to Add Ammo to Its Red Flag Grabs
California’s legislature never runs out of ways to chip at the Second Amendment, and the latest vehicle is AB-1753, a bill its backers describe as a mere “clarification” of the state’s red flag confiscation law. What it actually does is expand the state’s Gun Violence Restraining Order regime to sweep up ammunition, not just firearms.
What AB-1753 Actually Says
California’s GVRO already lets nearly anyone petition to strip a gun owner of their firearms. As Shooting News Weekly’s Lee Williams notes, the petitioner doesn’t even have to live under the same roof. Coworkers can file. So can someone who attends the same school. That’s before any hearing, and it’s the same person who then faces multiple hearings and heavy legal costs simply for lawfully owning a gun.
AB-1753 tacks ammunition onto that machinery. Per the bill’s text, it would explicitly require a restrained person “to relinquish, in addition to any firearm, any ammunition in that person’s immediate possession or control.”
The seizure duty lands on police. According to the bill’s text, it would “additionally require a peace officer to take temporary custody of any ammunition in plain sight or discovered pursuant to such a search.”
The measure also carries procedural changes taking effect January 1, 2028: courts would have to allow parties or witnesses to appear remotely at no cost for workplace and campus violence restraining order hearings, publish rules for those appearances online, and accept electronic filings for the protective orders.
Where Relief Might Come From
Williams argues the real fix has to be federal, since even a favorable governor’s race won’t turn California red. Help may be on the way from the courts. On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two Second Amendment Foundation cases, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, challenging bans on commonly owned rifles like the AR-15, according to Shooting News Weekly.
SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb said he’s “optimistic this case will be a giant leap forward for the right to keep and bear arms,” adding that the Court should “deposit these unconstitutional bans where they belong—in the wastebin of history.”