Firearm Loan Obligations Acknowledgment (CA DOJ Notice of Proposed Rulemaking)

[star.3d]

Email today (2/13/16) from CA DOJ regarding new rulemaking around loaning firearms.

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Hello,

The California Department of Justice has published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concerning Firearm Loan Obligations Acknowledgment regulations. The Notice and other documents related to the action are attached to this email. These documents are also available at https://oag.ca.gov/firearms/regs/firearmloan. Please feel free to share this Notice with any interested parties.

Any person, or a representative authorized to speak on their behalf, may submit written comments relevant to the proposed action. Comments will be accepted until 5:00 pm on March 31, 2026. All timely comments that specifically pertain to the proposed regulations will be reviewed and responded to by Department staff. Comments may be submitted by mail or email to:

• Mail written comments:

Department of Justice
P.O. Box 160487
Sacramento, CA 95816

• E-mail: BOFregulations@doj.ca.gov

NOTE: Written and oral comments, attachments, and associated contact information (e.g., address, phone, email, etc.) become part of the public record and can be released to the public upon request.

Thank you for your interest in this matter.

Regulations Unit
California Department of Justice | Office of General Counsel
1300 I Street, 17th Floor | Sacramento, CA 95814

 

[ikeo1]

I’m thinking this might be a good case to leverage AI and a lot of letters for comments from different people arguing their perspective polished by AI to address specific parts of the proposal.

I can see so many things wrong with this. They are really attacking ownership and want to make FFL’s the main place for transfer while trying to shutdow FFL’s

 

[star.3d]

This rule allows transfers to happen w/o an FFL under specific circumstances. Even if this isn't the highest priority rulemaking... we really need to get organized, because the AB1263 stuff is coming down the pipe.

§ 27883(i) requires the DOJ to issue this form [my clarification]:

27883.
Section 27545 [firearm transfers @ FFL] does not apply to the loan of a firearm provided all of the following requirements are met:
...
(i) There is a written document in a format prescribed by the Department of Justice that explains the obligations imposed by this section that is signed by both the party loaning the firearm for storage and the person receiving the firearm.
(j) Both parties to the loan have signed copies of the written document required by subdivision (i).

The stated purpose is as follows:

The proposal would benefit the health and welfare of California residents by establishing the format for the firearm loan document prescribed by Penal Code section 27883, allowing a person to safely loan a firearm to another person for up to 120 days. This is especially important to reduce the risk of accidents, theft, or misuse during periods when the owner cannot securely store or supervise firearm.

Fine. But if either party fails to sign this form... They may be charged with a misdemeanor, felony, and possibly face jail time. I wish the emphasis were on safety, not compliance... For example, failure to sign the form would put the transfer under PEC § 27590, a misdemeanor conviction under which would beget a 10 year ban on owning a firearm. Even if you followed the safe storage and 120 day requirements.

 

[BeAuMaN]

I mean, write your public comments, sure, and especially ask questions! But this is a good thing. I know, rare to hear about CA DOJ.

These are the regulations backing the creation of form BOF 145, which already exists: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/bof-145.pdf

Current revision is 1/2026, and they previously had a revision from 11/2025 (the statute changed slightly with the new year). However, this Section 27883 that creates this loan exemption with the loan acknowledgement form has existed in statute far longer.

If you look at the legislative history crossreference for CA PC 27883, you'll see that the language was actually added by SB-172 (2019), which included 27883(i) that said that to utilize this loan, there would need to be a written document prescribed by CA DOJ. Basically, CA DOJ was supposed to publish this document in 2020.

So... why is CA DOJ creating this form BOF-145 in November 2025, and engaging in rulemaking in Februrary 2026?

Well, funny that... So there was a person who had an issue with wanting to store their guns at a friend's house while they were gone for 3 months, so they asked for advice in a thread, and one individual replied that CA PC 27883 was supposed to have a form, but CA DOJ never published it, so it couldn't be used. That individual, a very smart and handsome individual, filed a CA PRA Request at the end of September 2025 asking for a copy of this form described in CA PC 27883(i), since it's a form that's supposed to exist, and it's a record.... and that if it didn't exist, they wanted records of any kind related to the development of this form that's supposed to exist.

Naturally, CA DOJ denied their request, saying that the evidence that they were working (or rather weren't working) on this form that was supposed to exist more than 5 years ago was exempt from disclosure. However, they did say that the form did not currently exist, but they were currently working to create this form! And so the form was created in November 2025, and revised for the new language with the statute update in January 2026, and I guess regular rulemaking in February 2026.

My best guess: that was the beginning of COVID; CA DOJ probably forgot, it slipped through the cracks, and nobody bothered them about it until that very smart and handsome individual did. It's an understandable mistake but still frustating. I'll give them crap for forgetting do it but I'm not going to criticize them on the quick response now that they've been made aware.

Which goes to show: While CA PRA Requests are useful (and frustrating) as a tool for gathering information, they can also be used as a free, no-risk communication with a CA Government Agency's lawyer who then must investigate your message, and suddenly someone in the agency is getting asked questions by the agency's lawyer.

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[Deleted member 16735]

I mean, write your public comments, sure, and especially ask questions! But this is a good thing. I know, rare to hear about CA DOJ.

These are the regulations backing the creation of form BOF 145, which already exists: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/bof-145.pdf

Current revision is 1/2026, and they previously had a revision from 11/2025 (the statute changed slightly with the new year). However, this Section 27883 that creates this loan exemption with the loan acknowledgement form has existed in statute far longer.

If you look at the legislative history crossreference for CA PC 27883, you'll see that the language was actually added by SB-172 (2019), which included 27883(i) that said that to utilize this loan, there would need to be a written document prescribed by CA DOJ. Basically, CA DOJ was supposed to publish this document in 2020.

So... why is CA DOJ creating this form BOF-145 in November 2025, and engaging in rulemaking in Februrary 2026?

Well, funny that... So there was a person who had an issue with wanting to store their guns at a friend's house while they were gone for 3 months, so they asked for advice in a thread, and one individual replied that CA PC 27883 was supposed to have a form, but CA DOJ never published it, so it couldn't be used. That individual, a very smart and handsome individual, filed a CA PRA Request at the end of September 2025 asking for a copy of this form described in CA PC 27883(i), since it's a form that's supposed to exist, and it's a record.... and that if it didn't exist, they wanted records of any kind related to the development of this form that's supposed to exist.

Naturally, CA DOJ denied their request, saying that the evidence that they were working (or rather weren't working) on this form that was supposed to exist more than 5 years ago was exempt from disclosure. However, they did say that the form did not currently exist, but they were currently working to create this form! And so the form was created in November 2025, and revised for the new language with the statute update in January 2026, and I guess regular rulemaking in February 2026.

My best guess: that was the beginning of COVID; CA DOJ probably forgot, it slipped through the cracks, and nobody bothered them about it until that very smart and handsome individual did. It's an understandable mistake but still frustating. I'll give them crap for forgetting do it but I'm not going to criticize them on the quick response now that they've been made aware.

Which goes to show: While CA PRA Requests are useful (and frustrating) as a tool for gathering information, they can also be used as a free, no-risk communication with a CA Government Agency's lawyer who then must investigate your message, and suddenly someone in the agency is getting asked questions by the agency's lawyer.

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Many agencies are getting around extensive PRA requests by having short email and MS teams retention policies, like 3 months for email and as short as a week for Teams messages. Once it's deleted from the servers it's no longer in the "public record" even if you save pdfs of those emails on your computer. Technically that's not true but it's true in practice because the way the lawyers search the record is just using a keyword search and I don't believe it's always searching the document text i.e. a pdf of an email or even a word document. Personal hard drives, phones etc. even shared servers are almost never searched for PRAs, they will be more rigorously searched if there is a case though. If you can identify the actual document though you will have much more success because that's much harder to gloss over. You are absolutely right about it being a vehicle to call attention to an issue, the PRAs go straight to the agency lawyers so if they know something is a hot topic that could turn into a case they will pay attention to it.