The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an amicus brief in Rhode v. Bonta, a challenge to California’s unconstitutional ammunition background check law. This legal challenge is backed by the National Rifle Association and the NRA’s state affiliate, the California Rifle and Pistol Association.
This brief is a must read, as it is filled with plainly honest lines such as:
- “California’s background-check regime for ammunition purchases is straightforwardly unconstitutional. Its purpose—the hindrance of law-abiding citizens’ exercise of their Second Amendment rights—finds no analogue among valid regulatory schemes of the past.”
- “The history and tradition surrounding the Second Amendment establish that firearms regulations must serve legitimate objectives and may not be designed simply to inhibit the ability to possess or carry operable protected firearms.”
- “When firearms regulations are designed to thwart the right to bear arms, they are unconstitutional, no matter the size or characteristics of the burden they impose.”
- “Any clear-eyed analysis of the challenged law must conclude that California designed its novel regime to infringe the exercise of the right to bear arms.”
- “The delay and confusion of California’s regime is the point, all to frustrate the Second Amendment right.”
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found the law unconstitutional in July 2025, and the state petitioned for rehearing en banc (entire court) ruling on August 7, 2025. The Ninth Circuit granted the petition on December 1, 2025, and scheduled oral arguments for the week of March 23, 2026.
Now the DOJ, as well as a coalition of 25-states, filed amicus briefs arguing that the ammunition restrictions violate the Second Amendment.
The state coalition’s brief contends that both the background check and anti-importation requirements violate the Second Amendment. Both restrictions “burden the fundamental right to armed self-defense by interfering with ammunition purchases, and both are unprecedented in our Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” says the brief.
