In a major victory for the Second Amendment, on Thursday, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals struck down a first-of-its-kind law that required a background check before every purchase of ammunition in California.
“By subjecting Californians to background checks for all ammunition purchases,” Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote for the majority in Rhode v. Bonta, “California’s ammunition background check regime infringes on the fundamental right to keep and bear arms.”
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California’s regime dates back to 2016, when California voters approved Proposition 63 by a margin of almost 2:1. Under the proposition, residents would pass an initial background check and then receive a four-year permit to purchase ammunition. However, California lawmakers amended the law to only allow ammunition purchases in-person and after a background check each time. By requiring face-to-face transactions, California also banned both online sales and prohibited Californians from buying ammunition out-of-state.
Prior to California’s regime taking effect in July 2019, multiple plaintiffs, including Olympic gold medalist Kim Rhode and the California Rifle & Pistol Association, sued the state in 2018.
To determine if California’s law was constitutional under the Second Amendment, the Ninth Circuit relied on a two-step test set by the Supreme Court in its 2022 landmark ruling, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. Under that decision’s framework, “when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.” If so, the government must then show that “the regulation is consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
In the California case, the Ninth Circuit determined that the Second Amendment protects “operable” arms, and “because arms are inoperable without ammunition, the right to keep and bear arms necessarily encompasses the right to have ammunition.” As a result, the court concluded that “California’s ammunition background check meaningfully constrains the right to keep operable arms.”
To survive the second step of the Bruen test, California attempted to compare its background check system to a wide range of historical analogues, including loyalty oaths and disarmament provisions from the American Revolution and Reconstruction. But the Ninth Circuit was left unconvinced.
“None of the historical analogues proffered by California is within the relevant time frame, or is relevantly similar to California’s ammunition background check regime,” Ikuta found, and so, “California’s ammunition background check regime does not survive scrutiny under the two-step Bruen analysis.”
In a sharply worded dissent, Judge Jay Bybee blasted the majority’s analysis as “twice-flawed.” Noting that “the vast majority of its checks cost one dollar and impose less than one minute of delay,” Judge Bybee asserted that California’s background check system is “not the kind of heavy-handed regulation that meaningfully constrains the right to keep and bear arms.” Notably, the California Department of Justice in 2024 received 191 reports of ammunition purchases from “armed and prohibited individuals” who were denied by background check.
In dueling statements, the California Rifle & Pistol Association praised Thursday’s ruling against the state’s background check law as a “massive victory for gun owners in California,” while Gov. Gavin Newsom called the decision a “slap in the face.”