The Golden State is doubling down on its shadowboxing campaign against “ghost guns” with two new laws that start on Jan. 1, 2026. 

Pitching the new restrictions as “consumer protection,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta outlined the regulations in an eight-page informational bulletin. The sweeping policies target everything from unassembled gun barrels and identification requirements for the purchase of firearm accessories to new rules governing “manufacturing machines” and restrictions on the distribution of digital manufacturing files.

Additionally, California has lined up a host of new penalties for offenders in its Don Quixote-like quest to destroy the phantom “ghost gun” dragon.
 

Summary of New Restrictions

Here's a summary breakdown of the attorney general’s press release on the new laws: 

• New requirements governing the sale of firearm barrels by licensed firearm dealers and other sellers.
• Updated civil code definitions for “firearm accessory” and “firearm manufacturing machine” under the Firearm Industry Responsibility Act.
• Consumer notice, age verification, and identification requirements for the sale and delivery of “firearm accessories,” “firearm manufacturing machines,” and firearm barrels by licensed firearm dealers and other firearm industry members.
• Updated definition and cause of action for unlawful distribution of digital firearm manufacturing code to unlicensed individuals.
• New criminal offense and civil cause of action for facilitating, or causing another person to engage in, the unlawful manufacture of firearms.
• Prohibition on firearm and ammunition possession/acquisition for 10 years by individuals convicted of additional firearm-related offenses.
   

What Are the New Laws?

Signed in October 2025 with a go-live date of Jan. 1, 2026, California Assembly Bill 1263 and Senate Bill 704 lay out a host of new legal definitions and restrictions. These are largely aimed at anyone interested in assembling a firearm and include traditionally non-controlled parts, such as barrels. 

California law already makes it a crime for “a person, other than a state-licensed firearms manufacturer, from using a computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine or three-dimensional printer to manufacture a firearm.” 

Assembly Bill 1263 expands this to include any person “knowingly or willfully causing another person to engage in the unlawful manufacture of firearms or knowingly or willfully aiding, abetting, prompting, or facilitating the unlawful manufacture of firearms.”

That includes sharing digital files used to manufacture firearms and firearm parts.

The bill further prohibits anyone convicted of misdemeanor violations, such as manufacturing or aiding in the manufacture of an “undetectable firearm,” from owning, purchasing, or receiving any firearm within 10 years.

Meanwhile, Senate Bill 704 bars the sale or transfer of a firearm barrel “unless the transaction is completed in person by a licensed firearms dealer.” Possessing a firearm barrel with the intent to sell is similarly banned.
 

Expanding Liability

California has essentially created a new crime that saddles consumers, sellers, and manufacturers of “firearm-related products” with similar liabilities, regardless of their direct role in actually manufacturing a firearm.

The definition of a firearm-related product in California law is sweeping. It includes any “firearm, ammunition, a firearm precursor part, a firearm component, firearm manufacturing machine, and a firearm accessory” that meets any of the broad conditions below: 

• The item is sold, made, or distributed in California.
• The item is intended to be sold or distributed in California.
• The item is or was possessed in California, and it was reasonably foreseeable that the item would be possessed in California.

Punishments for any violations would then expand retroactively to any person or entity connected upstream or downstream of an attempt to make, or potentially make, a firearm.

If that all sounds a bit confusing and overly convoluted, we are making an educated guess and assuming that is largely the point of the new laws.