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Gun laws in the United States by state
Gun laws in the United States regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition. State laws (and the laws of the District of Columbia and of the U.S. territories) vary considerably, and are independent of existing federal firearms laws, although they are sometimes broader or more limited in scope than the federal laws.
Forty-five states have a provision in their state constitutions similar to the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right to keep and bear arms.
Gun laws in California regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition in the state of California in the United States. The gun laws of California are widely regarded as among the most restrictive in the United States.
A buyer of any firearm must hold a five-year Firearm Safety Certificate, obtained by paying a $25 fee and passing a written test proctored by a DOJ Certified Instructor.
Voter ID laws in the US are laws that require a person to provide some form of official identification before they are permitted to register to vote, receive a ballot for an election, or to actually vote in elections in the United States.
At the federal level, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires a voter ID for all new voters in federal elections who registered by mail and who did not provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number that was matched against government records. Though state laws requiring some sort of identification at voting polls go back to 1950, no state required a voter to produce a government-issued photo ID as a condition for voting before the 2006 elections.
Harmeet Kaur Dhillon (born 1969) is an American lawyer who has served as the U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division since 2025. A member of the Republican Party, she is the former vice chair of the California Republican Party and a former Republican National Committeewoman for California.
She is the founder of a law practice called Dhillon Law Group Inc.
Elections are scheduled to be held, in large part, on November 3, 2026, in the United States. In these midterm elections, scheduled to occur during Republican president Donald Trump's second term, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate will be contested to determine the 120th United States Congress. Thirty-nine state and territorial U.S. gubernatorial elections, attorney general elections, and numerous state and local elections, will also be contested.
At the beginning of Donald Trump's second presidential term, he signed a series of executive orders. Many of these tested his legal authority, and drew immediate legal action. He issued more executive orders on his first day than any previous president.
California Proposition 50, officially known as the Election Rigging Response Act, is an amendment to the constitution of the U.S. state of California, which was passed by voters in a special election ballot on November 4, 2025. At the urging of California governor Gavin Newsom, the proposition was put on the ballot by the Democratic-controlled California State Legislature. Approved by 64.4% of voters, the proposition's purpose was to redraw the state's congressional districts, replacing the ones drawn by the bipartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission during the earlier 2020 redistricting cycle.
Election law and voting rights under the second Trump administration
The second Trump administration has issued executive orders and other presidential directives instituting federal department and agency actions that have impacted election administration by state governments, federal election security and campaign finance agencies, and offices within the U.S. Justice Department for enforcing voting rights protections. The administration's actions on election law and voting rights have occurred alongside the administration's targeting of political opponents and Republican Party efforts to disrupt voting after the 2024 presidential election. Election lawyers at the Brennan Center for Justice and Democracy Docket have described the administration's actions as election subversion, while surveys of U.S. political scientists conducted after Trump returned to office have found a consensus that the United States is transitioning towards illiberal democracy and competitive authoritarianism.