In July, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit killed California's ammunition restrictions. It ruled that background checks for ammunition were unconstitutional, which opened the door.
And Californians did it right.
See, they had to deal with an absolute headache in trying to buy ammo, including not being able to get it online at all, before the ruling. While there's a stay in place, basically, and it sure as hell sounds like they did just that in the time they had.
Lifelong hunter J.R. Young of San Jose rushed to an online ammunition dealer last week after a federal court decision overturned a California gun law that required background checks in person at every point of sale.
“Is this freedom week?” he said. “I was just curious to see if this striking down of the law is allowing companies to ship into the state again.
“The way we live in society now — when we want to buy something, we don’t want to go and take a trip to the store.”
Many bullet junkies, hunters and gun enthusiasts like Young quietly celebrated the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that may or may not ultimately put a dent in the state’s strict policies for purchasing ammunition.
For now, they can’t avoid the background checks. Four days after the decision, gun and ammunition dealers received notice that the in-state background check law still holds until the Department of Justice processes the ruling and issues an official mandate.
It’s unclear what will happen to the online ammunition orders Californians tried to make before that notice.
Second Amendment advocates have been here before. They have challenged the constitutionality of the measure that restricted gun ownership, Proposition 63, ever since voters approved it in 2016 and have seen a mix of rulings for and against them.
This time, the case is unfolding after a landmark 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down a New York City concealed carry law and generally limited how cities and states can restrict access to firearms.
I honestly don't see how the DOJ can really keep the law in place unilaterally when the court declared it unconstitutional. Had the court issued a stay of its own decision, that's one thing, but it didn't sound like that happened.
Still, the effect is the same, for all practical purposes, which means that for now, the rules hold.
But for four days, Californians kind of went wild buying ammo, and I don't blame them. Buy it just to celebrate being able to buy it, if nothing else.
And let's also be real, the rule was stupid from the start. Californians who wanted to skirt the law could just cross state lines, buy as much as they wanted from literally any other state surrounding them, and bring it back, and there wasn't anything anyone could do about it. Ammunition isn't serialized in any way, which means there's no way to trace it to a source, and thus no way to actually determine if someone got a check or not.
At every level, this was stupid.
Sure enough, though, Governor Gavin Newsom had to go on about how this was some "slap in the face" or whatever, despite the fact that if this law were a person, it was dumb enough to require lifelong institutionalization.
Let's be honest, a lot of Californians are everything we paint them as, but a whole lot of them aren't. They're people who value their rights, including their gun rights, just like the rest of us. They oppose every bit of this legislation. They're just outnumbered by hoplophobes in these large urban centers that litter the coast.
Seeing them take advantage of this Freedom Week is a good thing.
Now, to make it permanent.