On Friday, December 1, the California Department of Justice, Bureau of Firearms (“DOJ”) submitted its proposed regulations regarding the issuance of ammunition vendor licenses to the Office of Administrative Law (“OAL”) for review, regulations which are substantively unchanged from DOJ’s original proposal from July 14, 2017.

California law required DOJ to have implemented these regulations no later than July 1, 2017. This is because beginning January 1, 2018, almost all ammunition sales in California must be processed by or through a licensed ammunition vendor or California licensed firearms dealer. The regulations for the issuance of the ammunition vendor license needed to be in place by July 1, 2017, to allow ammunition retailers enough time to apply for and obtain the required license.

California’s Administrative Procedures Act allows OAL 30 working days to review the proposed regulations, but OAL can potentially decide to act well before that deadline, as we saw with the recently adopted “assault weapon” regulations. The deadline for OAL to make a decision on the final regulations is January 16, 2018, more than two weeks after the law is scheduled to take effect. Assuming OAL decides to act sooner, California ammunition retailers will not have enough time to apply for and obtain the required ammunition vendor licenses by January 1, 2018.

In September, NRA and CRPA submitted a written comment and provided oral testimony on DOJ’s proposed regulations. At this time we have yet to see if DOJ has addressed those comments in a “Final Statement of Reasons” as is required by law.

Continue to check your inbox and the California Stand and Fight webpage for updates on issues impacting your Second Amendment rights and hunting heritage in California.