Good 2d Amendment case
Rhode v. Bonta, No. 24-542 (9th Cir. 2025) shows the 9th Circuit will occasionally respect the Constitution and laws of the U.S.
This appeal raises the question whether California’s first-of-its-kind ammunition background check regime, which requires firearm owners to complete background checks before each ammunition purchase, violates the Second Amendment. We hold that California’s ammunition background check regime is unconstitutional, and we affirm the district court’s grant of a permanent injunction. I A In 2016, California voters approved Proposition 63, which created a background check regime for ammunition sales. This regime went into effect July 1, 2019. California requires residents to purchase ammunition through licensed ammunition vendors in face-to-face transactions. See Cal. Penal Code § 30312(a)–(b).1 The sale of ammunition must be approved by the California Department of Justice***
Background checks could take five days or longer and were only valid for 30 days. Moreover, California residents could not bring into the state ammunition that they had legally bought out of state.
Because this appeal involves a facial challenge to California’s ammunition background check regime, United States v. Rahimi directs us to consider whether the law on its face fits within the plain text of the Second Amendment and this Nation’s historical tradition. 602 U.S. 680, 700 (2024).12 B We now turn to the facts of this case. In 2018, lead plaintiff Kim Rhode, who has won Olympic medals for trap and skeet shooting, filed this pre-enforcement action along with six other California residents, three out-of-state ammunition vendors, and the California Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. The plaintiffs (referred to collectively as “Rhode”) challenged California’s ammunition background check regime on several grounds, three of which are relevant to this appeal. Rhode argues that California’s ammunition background check regime infringes upon California residents’ Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, violates the dormant Commerce Clause by barring unlicensed, out-of-state ammunition vendors from selling ammunition directly to Californians, and is expressly preempted by 18 U.S.C. § 926A.13 The district court issued a preliminary injunction barring California from “enforcing the ammunition sales background check provisions found in California Penal Code §§ 30370(a) through (d) and 30352, and the ammunition anti-importation provisions***
the right to keep and bear arms necessarily encompasses the right to have ammunition. *** “the central component” of the Second Amendment right is the right to use an arm for self-defense *** A firearm is not available “for the purpose of offensive or defensive action,” *** if it is unloaded. In other words, the right to keep and bear arms incorporates the right to operate them, which requires ammunition. *** “without bullets, the right to bear arms would be meaningless”), *** Thus, we have recognized that laws regulating ammunition fall under the ambit of the Second Amendment.***
Because the right to keep and bear arms includes the right to keep operable arms, rules on ammunition acquisition implicate the plain text of the Second Amendment if they meaningfully constrain the right to keep operable arms.***
California could not point to any history, tradition, or custom remotely similar to its ammunition purchase restrictions. Accordingly, California could not show its law was “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Therefore, California's law violated the 2d Amendment.
This was only a panel opinion. The court as a whole might reverse this decision.
