AB 1753 is law: ammunition surrender under protective orders, plus a wider 10-year gun ban

Signing AB 1753 into law makes explicit that a Californian under a protective order must surrender ammunition along with firearms, and adds a 10-year firearm and ammunition ban for certain convictions. The main duties start January 1, 2027; court-procedure changes wait until 2028 and 2029.

Sources checked October 8, 2026. Educational information only, not legal advice.

What changed	AB 1753 became law: protective-order surrender now expressly covers ammunition, and a 10-year firearm ban reaches more convictions.
Effective	January 1, 2027 for the main duties; January 1, 2028 and July 1, 2029 for later court-procedure provisions.
Applies to	People subject to California protective orders, and people convicted on or after January 1, 2027 of listed misdemeanors, including hate crimes and protective-order violations.
Statutory basis	AB 1753 (Stefani), Chapter 458, Statutes of 2026.

What happened

Governor Newsom signed AB 1753 on September 26, 2026, and the Secretary of State chaptered it the same day as Chapter 458, Statutes of 2026. The bill rewrites California’s protective-order procedures across the Code of Civil Procedure, Family Code, and Penal Code. Where the existing surrender procedures required a restrained person to relinquish firearms, the bill makes explicit and conforming that they must also relinquish any ammunition in their immediate possession or control, across civil harassment, domestic violence, elder and dependent adult abuse, gun violence, postsecondary school, and workplace violence restraining orders.

The bill also expands the existing 10-year firearm prohibition in Penal Code section 29805. A person convicted on or after January 1, 2027 of specified misdemeanors — including misdemeanor violations of a gun violence restraining order or other protective orders, and offenses that constitute hate crimes — may not own, purchase, receive, possess, or control a firearm for 10 years after the conviction. AB 1753 also requires district attorneys and prosecuting city attorneys to search the California DOJ Automated Firearms System on domestic-violence charges.

Some provisions are staged later. Commencing January 1, 2028, courts must allow remote appearances at no cost in postsecondary and workplace violence restraining-order hearings and accept related electronic filings; a court may not require advance notice before accepting or deciding an ex parte request when the applicant certifies under oath that notice would likely endanger someone; and law enforcement may seek enforcement of another state’s extreme risk protection order. An unrelated rewrite of Penal Code section 422.88 waits until July 1, 2029.

What it means for you

If you are the restrained person under a covered California protective order, the surrender duty now expressly names ammunition as well as firearms. That core obligation, and the expanded 10-year prohibition for convictions on or after January 1, 2027, take effect January 1, 2027 under California’s default effective-date rule. A conviction that predates January 1, 2027 is not reached by the new trigger for these added offenses.

The court-procedure changes — remote hearings, e-filing, and interstate extreme risk order enforcement — do not begin until January 1, 2028, and the section 422.88 rewrite not until July 1, 2029. Nothing in AB 1753 changes California’s concealed-carry rules, the three-in-30-day purchase limit, or the handgun roster. It is one of ten gun bills the Governor signed on September 26, 2026.

The official source