California’s law requiring background checks to purchase ammunition is unconstitutional, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week. Firearms are useless without ammunition and California’s law “constrains the right to keep operable firearms,” wrote Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta in the panel’s majority opinion.
California’s 2016 Proposition 63 required background checks to ensure that those seeking to purchase ammunition “are not prohibited persons.” It didn’t exactly work out that way.
The background checks went into effect on July 1, 2019. By December 2019, California had run 345,000 background checks and rejected 62,000 Californians legally entitled to purchase ammunition, including off-duty sheriff’s deputies purchasing shotgun shells to hunt ducks. Officials blamed glitches in the system, but for Ari Freilich of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the system was working as intended, as a “red flag” law allowing seizure of weapons from those who have committed no crime.
California’s background check law also required ammunition dealers “to collect and report information — such as the date of the sale, the buyers’ identification information, and the type of ammunition purchased — to DOJ [department of justice] for storage in a database for two years.” In effect, this turns ammunition retailers into government snoops, a trend in California.
In 2016 Gov. Jerry Brown tucked $5 million into the state budget for the Firearm Violence Research Center at the University of California, Davis. Garen Wintemute, director of the center, claimed to be “driven by data, not by a policy agenda,” and told reporters the center’s first project would be “a survey that looks at who owns guns, why they own them and how they use firearms.”
The new center also targeted those who sell guns, claiming that cities with increases in gun purchases also experience more gun-related injuries. State officials’ zeal to stop “gun violence,” identify gun owners, and restrict the sale of ammunition is not matched by vigilance against violent criminals.
On Dec. 26, 2019, Gustavo Perez Arriaga, also known as Paulo Virgen Mendoza, gunned down Newman, California, police officer Ronil Singh, a legal immigrant from Fiji who came to the United States with the goal of becoming a police officer.
Gov. Jerry Brown issued a statement extending condolences to Singh’s family but claimed that the shooting had “nothing to do” with California’s sanctuary law, Senate Bill 54, which Brown signed in 2017. Thousands of police officers and community members showed up for Singh’s funeral. Governor-elect Gavin Newsom was a no-show and failed to condemn the murder as “gun violence.”
In November 2021, an armed robber gunned down security guard Kevin Nishita, a former San Jose police officer as he protected a camera crew. The governor was not present at a memorial service for the slain father and grandfather, and in a belated statement said “the death of former police officer Kevin Nishita is a tragedy.” No word from California’s governor of how Nishita died, no mention of a crime, and no denunciation of “gun violence.”
It has somehow escaped notice that guns do not operate apart from human agency, and that violent criminals simply disregard California’s onerous gun laws. It has also been forgotten that gun dealers can play a key role against violent crime.
In 1997 in North Hollywood, bank robbers Larry Eugene Phillips and Emil Matasareanu blasted away with fully automatic rifles, illegal under California law. Outgunned with only their 9mm pistols, officers went to nearby B&B Sales, where the owner supplied them with four 5.56mm Bushmaster XM-15 semi-automatic rifles with high-capacity magazines and two Remington shotguns with rifled slugs.
The police used these legal weapons to take down the robbers, with no deaths among officers or bystanders. Now free to buy ammunition for their legal firearms without bureaucratic intrusion, Californians will be better able to defend their lives and property against violent criminals. For their part, California politicians are unlikely to gain respect for the Second Amendment, and in recent years the First Amendment has also been coming under fire.
Assembly Bill 2655 requires labeling of videos “deceptive or digitally altered” and requires mechanisms to report such content. In his signing message, Gov. Newsom said it would “help to combat the harmful use of deepfakes in political ads and other content.” If Californians thought that the measure threatens free speech, it would be hard to blame them.
“The First Amendment is first for a reason,” says comedian Dave Chappelle, often the target of “woke” censors. “Second Amendment is just in case the first one doesn’t work out.”
Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.
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