Month: June 2024
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A Baltimore Arms Shotgun in 12 GA.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta
Further bolstering the case against the state of California for restricting gun purchases to one a month, the National Rifle Association has filed a brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal in the lawsuit challenging that law.
In the case Nguyen v. Bonta, plaintiffs argue that the law restricting firearm purchases to no more than one every 30 days is a violation of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. In March, a U.S. District Court ruled the law to be unconstitutional, but the state—never opposed to wasting citizens’ tax dollars—appealed the decision to the 9th Circuit Court.
In the brief, the NRA argues that the law violates the Second Amendment because the right to “keep and bear” arms includes the right to “acquire” firearms.
“This Court has twice held that the Second Amendment protects the right to acquire arms,” the brief stated. “This Court’s prior holdings are supported by Supreme Court precedent. First, the Supreme Court has determined that ‘keep Arms’ in the Amendment’s text means to ‘have weapons,’ and the plain meaning of ‘have’ encompasses the act of acquisition. Second, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that certain rights are implicit in enumerated guarantees. In the Second Amendment context, four Justices have recognized—and none have disagreed—that firearms training is ‘a necessary concomitant’ of the right to keep and bear arms. As this Court, the Third Circuit, and many district courts have recognized, acquiring a firearm must be a necessary concomitant as well.”
The brief further argues that multiple gun purchases per month were common in early America, and there were no historical limitations on the number of firearms that law-abiding citizens could purchase—a fact the government must prove under the new Bruen standard.
“The State argues that a more nuanced analogical approach is required because historically firearms were too laborious to manufacture and too expensive to purchase for firearms to be available for bulk purchase,” the brief stated. “In fact, firearms were ubiquitous in early America, and affordable enough for every militiaman and many women to be required to purchase one or several firearms. Indeed, newspaper advertisements regularly offered large quantities of firearms for sale.”
Further bolstering that point, the brief continued: “In any event, California does not merely prohibit “bulk” purchases; it prohibits the purchase of even two firearms in one month. Americans commonly purchased multiple firearms in a single transaction in the colonial and founding eras—and no law ever forbade it.” The brief also pointed out that the state “failed to provide a single historical law limiting how many firearms someone could purchase in a month. Nor did the State provide any founding era regulation.”
In the end, the brief calls for the circuit court to affirm the earlier district court ruling that the law is unconstitutional.
