BELLEVUE, Wash. — Sept. 18, 2026 — The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) today submitted formal comments to the California Department of Justice (CADOJ) on proposed regulations implementing Senate Bill 704’s new background check requirement for firearm barrel transfers.
SB 704 is the first barrel-purchase background check law in the nation and has no historical analogue, therefore it is unconstitutional. Because CADOJ is proceeding with rulemaking anyway, the letter focuses on making implementation less destructive by at least avoiding the pitfalls that plague California’s similar ammunition eligibility check system. Under the proposed rules, a “Standard Firearm Barrel Eligibility Check” would work much like the current ammunition check in the state: it looks for a matching entry in the Automated Firearms System (AFS). If there is no match, the buyer may use a Basic Check. The proposed regulations do not clearly tell dealers or customers they can take the next step to ensure they’re not prohibited from purchasing ammunition.
“California already prices and papers the right to keep and bear arms nearly out of reach,” said SAF Director of Legal Research and Education Kostas Moros, who signed the letter. “Now it wants a background check just to buy a barrel. If the Department insists on building this system, it should not copy the ammunition regime’s worst feature: rejecting tens of thousands of law-abiding people for a name or address mismatch and never telling them they can still complete a Basic Check.”
In the comment letter, SAF recommends that a Standard Check rejection for no matching AFS record automatically proceed to a Basic Check, or that dealers at least be required to tell customers that such rejections are common and usually do not mean the buyer is prohibited. SAF warned that the same silence in the AFS has produced mass false rejections for ammunition background checks. California DOJ’s own data in Rhode v. Bonta showed that from January through June 2023, 58,087 people were rejected on AFS ammunition checks for records mismatches, while only 141 were denied as prohibited persons – about 412 law-abiding buyers blocked for every prohibited person stopped. Roughly one in ten checks failed, and more than a third of those wrongly rejected in January 2023 still had not completed an ammunition purchase five months later.
“This is yet another layer in a stack of fees, roster limits, excise taxes and paperwork that are meant to do nothing more than keep Californians from exercising their full Second Amendment rights,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “It’s a sad state of affairs when, by the CADOJ’s own admission, the AFS is a complete failure but that still doesn’t stop fearmongering lawmakers from continuing to implement unconstitutional laws and regulations. Unfortunately, they cannot undo an unconstitutional statute by regulation, but they can certainly stop making a bad law even worse.”
For more information visit SAF.org.
The Second Amendment Foundation (saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group dedicated to safeguarding and promoting the fundamental rights of individuals enshrined in the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. SAF engages in aggressive legal action to ensure the principles of armed self-defense, personal liberty, and the ownership of arms are defended, secured, and restored. Through public education initiatives, SAF teaches the importance of the Second Amendment to promote a society that values and exercises the right to keep and bear arms.
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