by Olympian Kim Rhode and the California Rifle & Pistol Association won a preliminary injunction against enforcement of California’s ammunition background checks and importation ban yesterday.
US District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez opened his 120 page opinion granting the preliminary injunction by saying:
The experiment has been tried. The casualties have been counted.
California’s new ammunition background check law misfires and the Second Amendment rights of California citizens have been gravely injured. In this action, Plaintiffs seek a preliminary injunction enjoining California’s onerous and convoluted new laws requiring ammunition purchase background checks and implementing ammunition anti-importation laws. For the reasons that follow, the motion for preliminary injunction is granted.
This is a big win for the CRPA, attorney Chuck Michel, and especially the gun owners, new and old, of California.
Judge Benitez went on to conclude:
Together, the background check requirement for all ammunition purchases in California and the anti-importation provisions that prohibit direct sales to residents often effect a complete statutory barrier to the lawful purchase of ammunition. Moreover, the provisions are interlocking and derive from the same section of Proposition 63. See §§ 8.1 through 8.16. The anti-importation provisions are not severable from the ammunition background check requirements. Even if only one part was unconstitutional both parts would need to be enjoined. But severability does not matter here, as both parts fail constitutional muster and require injunctive relief….
It is not the Court’s role to dictate to a state how it should go about attempting to accomplish its goal. If the state objective is to make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for its law-abiding citizens to purchase protected ammunition, then this law appears to be well-drafted. However, if the genuine object is to keep ammunition out of the hands of those who should not be able to buy it, perhaps the State could create a database (that would include persons prohibited, i.e., aliens
unlawfully present, felons, and others) and simply make that information available to sellers by cross-checking with the magnetic strip on a standard driver’s license and by allowing out-of-state vendors the same ability to engage in commerce as it does California vendors.
I would wager house money that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra will appeal this ruling. As of this morning, he has not nor has he published a press release indicating any acknowledgement of the Judge Benitez’s ruling. If the state does appeal, the question then becomes will they be granted a stay to the preliminary injunction while they appeal the ruling. We will see.
In the meantime, Californians are free of an onerous and unconstitutional burden on their Second Amendment rights.
