The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed Friday with a San Diego federal judge who found that California’s law that barred buying more than one gun per month was unconstitutional.
The law, which was struck down by U.S. District Judge William Hayes in March of last year, was intended to cut down on what’s known as straw purchases, in which someone legally buys a gun, then gives it to someone else who is prohibited from possessing a firearm.
It was challenged in a lawsuit filed on behalf of several gun owners, firearm advocacy organizations, and gun retailers, who claimed the law violated the Second Amendment.
Both Hayes and a 9th Circuit panel agreed, with their findings applying the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which holds that gun laws should be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulations.
Judge Danielle Forrest, writing for the panel, stated in Friday’s ruling there wasn’t a historical record of laws that imposed regulations similar to California’s one-gun-a-month law.
While the state argued the law does not infringe on Second Amendment rights because restricting the frequency of purchases doesn’t prevent anyone from owning multiple firearms, the 9th Circuit panel disagreed.
“We are not aware of any circumstance where government may temporally meter the exercise of constitutional rights in this manner,” the ruling states. “And we doubt anyone would think government could limit citizens’ free- speech right to one protest a month, their free-exercise right to one worship service per month, or their right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures to apply only to one search or arrest per month. We could go on.”
The Firearms Policy Coalition, one of several plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit, praised the decision in a statement.
The organization’s president, Brandon Combs, said, “As this decision shows, the right to keep and bear arms cannot be limited by an arbitrary cap on the number of guns that can be acquired at one time. We have a right to buy more than one gun at a time just as we have a right to buy more than one bible at a time.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office and the Department of Justice could not immediately be reached for comment.
–City News Service
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