Los Angeles Repeals Its One-Handgun-a-Month Rule

Last updated October 2026 · By Nick Hall, reads the council files, code sections and court dockets behind California gun rules for USA Gun Shop readers

Quick take: Los Angeles has repealed its own one-handgun-a-month rule, and the repeal takes effect on November 1, 2026. The city acted after a gun owner sued it in federal court over the 1999 ordinance. State law still caps you at three firearms in 30 days, and the 10-day wait has not gone anywhere.

• What happened: The City Council adopted Ordinance 189039 by a 10-0 vote on September 9, 2026, Mayor Karen Bass approved it on September 21, and it repeals Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 55.14 in its entirety.
• Why it matters: Section 55.14 barred most buyers from applying to a city-licensed dealer for a handgun within 30 days of an earlier handgun application anywhere in California.
• What’s next: The repeal takes effect on November 1, 2026, and the section stays in the city code until then.
• Who to watch: Judge Fernando M. Olguin, who has the federal lawsuit the council file is named after, a case that also names the City of Inglewood.

Most local gun-law stories run one way: a council adds a rule and the lawyers turn up afterwards. This one ran backwards. A gun owner sued, the City Attorney took the case to the council, and about three months later the rule was voted out without a single no vote. I pulled the council file, the code section and both court dockets, and here is what the repeal does and what it leaves exactly where it was.

Table of Contents

What Ordinance 189039 Actually Repeals

The operative part of the ordinance is one sentence long. “Section 55.14 of Article 5, Chapter V of the Los Angeles Municipal Code is hereby repealed in its entirety.” That is all of it, and you can read it in Council File 26-1014.

The section it kills, LAMC 55.14, is headed Sale or Purchase of More Than One Handgun Within a Thirty Day Period Prohibited. The code’s own history note says it was added by Ordinance 172,430, effective March 4, 1999 and operative June 3, 1999.

The core of it is subsection (b). Nobody could apply to a dealer to buy “a pistol, revolver or other firearm capable of being concealed upon the person” if they were “within thirty (30) days of making a prior application for the purchase of a handgun within the State of California.”

Two words in there decide who it reached. The first is handgun: this section never covered rifles or shotguns. The second is dealer, which the section defines as “a retail firearms dealer licensed by the City of Los Angeles,” so the rule applied at shops holding a city license and nowhere else.

The penalties were small and they stacked. A first violation by the buyer was “an infraction subject to a fine of $50.00,” a second cost $100, and a third or later one was a misdemeanor. “Each handgun applied for shall be deemed a separate violation.”

Dealers carried the paperwork: two years of handgun sale records, a posted sign, and a form each purchaser signed under penalty of perjury. All of that goes with the section, along with its seventeen listed exemptions.

The Lawsuit Behind Council File 26-1014

The council file is not titled as a gun-policy item. It is titled with a lawsuit and a code section, Thomas Lopez, et al. v. City of Los Angeles, et al., and the City Attorney is listed as the office that initiated it.

That case was filed on June 3, 2026 in the US District Court for the Central District of California, case number 2:26-cv-06003. The complaint describes Thomas Lopez as a 26-year-old California National Guard member who wants to buy more than one handgun in 30 days from a dealer in the city. Firearms Policy Coalition and California Gun Rights Foundation are his co-plaintiffs.

The city answered on July 2. It “admits it has an ordinance limiting the purchase of handguns to once every 30 days” and denied nearly everything else. Eighteen days later, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office asked the council for a closed session, in a report that says only this about the dispute: “This case concerns a challenge to Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 55.14.”

On August 27 the same office sent over a draft ordinance with a two-paragraph cover report. “This draft ordinance repeals Section 55.14 of Article 5, Chapter V of the Los Angeles Municipal Code.” No reasons given.

And that is as close as the city gets to explaining itself. The file holds no motion, no committee report and no findings. Every agenda entry pairs the repeal with the Lopez case, and nothing in the record says the city conceded the ordinance was unconstitutional.

On September 2 the council approved the City Attorney’s report 11-0 with four members absent and held the ordinance over for a second reading. On September 9 it adopted the ordinance 10-0 with five absent.

Mayor Bass approved it on September 21, the last day she had to act. The clerk posted it on September 22 and recorded the effective date as November 1, 2026.

Why the Ninth Circuit Already Had the City Cornered

The state’s version of this rule lost first. In Nguyen v. Bonta, filed June 20, 2025, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel took up the California statute that, in the court’s words, “prohibits most people from buying more than one firearm in a 30-day period.”

Judge Danielle J. Forrest wrote for the panel, joined by Judges John B. Owens and Bridget S. Bade. “The district court held that this law violates the Second Amendment. We affirm.”

The line that travels is this one: “We are not aware of any circumstance where government may temporally meter the exercise of constitutional rights in this manner.”

It has limits. Judge Owens added a short concurrence to say the opinion is about the one-gun law only. “It does not address other means of restricting bulk and straw purchasing of firearms,” he wrote, which the country’s tradition of regulation “may support.”

The state did not keep fighting in that court. It got extra time, until August 6, 2025, to ask for rehearing, the docket shows no petition, and the mandate issued on August 14, 2025.

But a ruling from the Ninth Circuit on a state statute does not erase a city ordinance that covers the same ground for handguns, which is why a rule the appeals court’s reasoning had already undercut was still sitting in the Los Angeles code nearly a year later, waiting for somebody to sue over it.

Keep the categories straight, though. No court has ruled on Section 55.14. A council repealed it, and a council repeal binds nobody outside the city limits.

What Changes for Los Angeles Handgun Buyers on November 1

Less than the headline suggests. Sacramento did not walk away from purchase caps after Nguyen. It rewrote one.

Assembly Bill 1078, approved by the governor on October 10, 2025, replaced Penal Code Section 27535 from April 1, 2026. The new text says a person shall not apply to buy firearms in a way “that would result in the purchase of more than three firearms cumulatively within any 30-day period.” The bill’s digest puts the change as “from one to 3.”

The state cap counts firearms, not handguns, so a rifle and a shotgun use up two of your three.

So here is the practical change. At a city-licensed shop, a second handgun application inside 30 days stops being a municipal offense. A fourth gun in the same 30 days is still more than state law allows.

Everything else in our California gun laws guide stays put. Penal Code Section 26815 still says no firearm is delivered “Within 10 days of the application to purchase.” Section 31615 still bars buying a gun “without a valid firearm safety certificate.” Section 27505 still says nobody may “sell a handgun to an individual under 21 years of age.”

The roster has not moved either. Section 32000 still makes it a crime to offer an “unsafe handgun” for sale, which is the rule behind the California handgun roster and the reason a single listing like the Glock 43X CA makes news.

The ordinance repeals 55.14 and nothing more, so Section 55.15 still requires a dealer to take “the right thumb print of the purchaser or transferee” on every firearm sale.

One caution on timing. Section 55.14 is in the code through October 31, and the ordinance says nothing about applications made before the effective date. I would not treat October as a free month.

What Happens Next in Lopez v. City of Los Angeles

The lawsuit is not closed on the record I can see. In a September 2 filing, the plaintiffs told Judge Olguin they had sent proposed stipulated judgments to both cities on August 28 and had been advised the repeal was on that day’s council agenda.

The docket, last updated October 5, 2026, shows no filing after September 2. No judgment. No dismissal.

Los Angeles is also not the only defendant. The complaint names the City of Inglewood and two of its officials over a separate Inglewood ordinance, and a vote at Los Angeles City Hall does not change another city’s code.

If you buy inside the city limits, November 1 puts you under the same ceiling as the rest of California. If you were hoping the ceiling had gone, it hasn’t.

Twenty-seven years in the code. Gone in one sentence.

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