California’s law blocking people from buying more than one gun a month is blocked, after a federal appeals court on Aug. 15 removed a stay pending appeal.
“This order allows our hard-won injunction to take effect and, unless the Ninth Circuit issues a new stay, Californians may now apply to purchase multiple firearms within a 30-day period,” Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, said in a statement.
The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, which has been defending the law in court, did not respond to an early morning request for comment.
The statute requires firearm dealers to post signs stating in part, “No person shall make an application to purchase more than one handgun or semiautomatic centerfire rifle within any 30-day period and no delivery shall be made to any person who has made an application to purchase more than one handgun or semiautomatic centerfire rifle within any 30-day period.”
The Firearms Policy Coalition sued, arguing the law was unconstitutional.
In that decision, justices said officials who impose gun restrictions must show they’re rooted in the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulations.
“Defendants have not met their burden of producing a ‘well-established and representative historical analogue’ to the OGM law,” Hayes wrote, referring to the one-gun-a-month (OGM) law. “The court therefore concludes that plaintiffs are entitled to summary judgment as to the constitutionality of the OGM law under the Second Amendment.”
Hayes permanently blocked the law or entered a permanent injunction.
But Bonta appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in April entered a stay pending the outcome of the appeal.
Two of three judges who considered the motion for a stay said that California officials had shown they were likely to succeed in the appeal. They were U.S. Circuit Judges Mark J. Bennett and Eric D. Miller. But the other judge said that he thought they were unlikely to succeed.
“As the district court properly concluded, the right to buy a firearm is covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment. Moreover, under Bruen, no historical analogue permits California’s regulation,” U.S. Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson wrote. “California points mainly to historical regulations of the sale, storage, and transport of gun powder—the same analogues California cites to support almost all of its onerous gun restrictions. As the district court properly found, these are not sufficiently close analogues under Bruen.”
A different three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit on Thursday entered the order rescinding the stay pending appeal. That panel consisted of U.S. Circuit Judges John B. Owens, Bridget S. Bade, and Danielle J. Forrest.
The Ninth Circuit could still ultimately uphold the law and has not issued a final ruling.
The reversal was made after the judges in a hearing expressed doubt that the law was constitutional.
“The Supreme Court has said that for Second Amendment cases, we can look by analogy to other rights that citizens have, including First Amendment rights, etc. It would be absurd to think that a government could say you can only buy one book a month, because we want to make sure that you really understand the books that you read, or you can only attend one protest a month, because there are some societal drawbacks to having protests, and so we want to kind of space those out,” Forrest said during the hearing.
“So if we conclude that you have a right to bear arms, and we conclude that that’s not the right to bear an arm, but could be plural ... what is the basis in the law anywhere for the idea that you could say to someone, yes, you have this right, but we’re going to control how frequently or how often you get to exercise it?” she added.
California lawyers pointed to a law barring people who are intoxicated from buying guns for 10 days and have cited laws limiting the ability of Native Americans and some others from buying guns.
Owens presented the hypothetical of a liquor store owner being told by a gang to pay them protection or face trouble. “So I say, ‘boy, I better have a gun in my store. I need to have a gun in my house, and I don’t have any firearms.’ Under the state of California’s rule, I could buy a gun to protect my store or my house, but I couldn’t buy one for each, correct, and I'd have to wait 30 days,” he said.
“That’s right, Your Honor. You would have to wait 30 days from when you purchased your first firearm to getting a second one,” Jerry Yen, an attorney with Bonta’s office, said.
“So with that understanding, if the core right the Second Amendment is trying to protect a self defense,” Owens said, “then it seems to me that the law here is impeding that core.”
