Another Second Amendment win, this time in the People’s Republic of California.
A San Diego federal judge on Wednesday again struck down a state law that required background checks for nearly all purchases of firearm ammunition and barred California residents from bringing home ammunition that they purchased out of state.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez ruled that such restrictions violate the Second Amendment. He also ruled that the portion of the law restricting out-of-state purchases violated the dormant Commerce Clause and is preempted by federal law regulating interstate transportation of firearms.
Benitez had previously struck down the same law in April 2020, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the law just days later while the government appealed the ruling. Before the 9th Circuit could rule on that appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in a New York gun case that upended Second Amendment case law.
After the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, the 9th Circuit sent the case back to Benitez to be relitigated under that new framework, which holds that modern gun laws must be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Benitez found that the “ammunition background checks laws have no historical pedigree and operate in such a way that they violate the Second Amendment right of citizens to keep and bear arms.” He issued an immediate injunction barring the state from enforcing the law.
The California Rifle & Pistol Association, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement that Wednesday’s ruling represents “continued progress in rolling back decades of attacks on the rights of lawful gun owners.”
Chuck Michel, president and general counsel of the group, said the ruling showed, once again, that the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision has greatly impacted how courts must analyze “these absurdly restrictive laws.”
Snip.
“In the end, the State has failed to carry its burden to demonstrate that the ammunition background check laws ‘are consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,’ as required by Bruen,” the judge wrote. “… A sweeping background check requirement imposed every time a citizen needs to buy ammunition is an outlier that our ancestors would have never accepted for a citizen.”
He also wrote that state data showed too many people seeking to lawfully purchase ammunition were being rejected because of flaws in the system. He said that according to state statistics, when the system was first implemented in 2019, the rejection rate was 16 percent. That has since fallen to 11 percent, “but is still too high,” he wrote.
When a circuit court as notoriously liberal feels compelled to send cases back to lower court in light of Bruen, the the Second Amendment is winning.
On the downside, the Democratic Party in general, and California Democrats in particular, have proven that no amount of rulings will prevent them from pursuing the goal of complete disarmament of law-abiding citizens.
Expect California Democrats to respond by passing a whole slew of gun-grabbing legislation that continues to ignore the clear guidelines of Bruen.
