When Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris told 60 Minutes she owns a Glock pistol she did not mention what type, and she did not mention that residents in her home state of California cannot own newer generation Glocks because of a law she supported.
California has an “Unsafe Handgun Act” (2001), which bars the importation and/or sale of any gun that does not meet certain safety requirements set by the state. Consequently, the state maintains an approved handguns roster, which lists the firearms the state has deemed safe, according to California standards.
The roster is what would-be California gun buyers reference to learn what handguns they can legally own.
Kamala Harris: ‘I Have a Glock’ Of Course I Fired It
The webpage for the roster says, “As of January 1, 2001, no handgun may be manufactured within California, imported into California for sale, lent, given, kept for sale, or offered/exposed for sale unless that handgun model has passed firing, safety, and drop tests and is certified for sale in California by the Department of Justice.”
Glock handguns–which are some of the most popular firearms in the world–are on the roster in a very limited fashion. Glock was first introduced in the U.S. in the 1980s (Generation 1) and has run through various upgrades and enhancements (they are now on Generation 5). The only Glock models approved for sale in California are Generation 3 models, and attorney Kostas Moros explained that the Generation 3 guns are only allowed because they were grandfathered in at the time that the “Unsafe Handgun Act” was adopted.
Apart from those Glocks that are grandfathered in the state of California does not allow sale of the pistols, as they consider them “unsafe handguns” for lacking “a compliant chamber load indicator, lack a magazine disconnect mechanism, and until our lawsuit caused California to repeal the requirement, of course lacked microstamping.”
It should be noted that microstamping was not one of the requirements for approved handguns in California until implemented by that state’s Attorney General, Kamala Harris, in 2013.
It must also be pointed out that law enforcement is exempt from the parameters set by the “Unsafe Handgun Act.” This means Harris, as the Attorney General of California and former D.A. of San Francisco, would not be limited to the Generation 3 approved for commoners.
All that is known is that Harris’s gun is a Glock and she told 60 minutes that she shot it at a range.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, a Pulsar Night Vision pro-staffer, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly: awrhawkins@breitbart.com.