California gun purchasers moved closer no longer being limited to buying a single gun per 30-day period, thanks to a June 20 ruling by the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the case Nguyen v. Bonta, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court struck down the Golden State law limiting gun purchases to one a month, ruling that the requirement violated the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights and that there also was no historic precedent for such a law as required by the second standard set forth in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022).
Plaintiffs had earlier secured a summary judgment win at the district court level, but California appealed that ruling to the Ninth Circuit.
The court opinion explained that the “arms” mentioned in the “right to keep and bear arms” insinuates more than one, and to bear those arms one must be able to purchase them.
Bottom of Form“California has a ‘one-gun-a-month’ law that prohibits most people from buying more than one firearm in a 30-day period,” the ruling stated. “The district court held that this law violates the Second Amendment. We affirm. California’s law is facially unconstitutional because possession of multiple firearms and the ability to acquire firearms through purchase without meaningful constraints are protected by the Second Amendment and California’s law is not supported by our nation’s tradition of firearms regulation.”
According to the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), California enacted its one-gun-a-month law in 1999, and at the time it applied only to concealable firearms. By 2024, however, it applied to all firearms.
Delving deeper into the “nation’s tradition of firearms regulation,” the court opinion stated: “We agree with the district court that the historical law presenting the closest analogue with relevant similarities is a law from the Virginia colony that prohibited the ‘carrying of more than one gun and ten charges of powder when traveling near any Native town or more than three miles away from an English plantation.’ But there remain important differences. This law did not burden a citizen’s ability to acquire multiple firearms within a specific period. It burdened only how many firearms a person could carry in a defined location.”
Ultimately, the court concluded: “The Second Amendment expressly protects the right to possess multiple arms. It also protects against meaningful constraints on the right to acquire arms because otherwise the right to ‘keep and bear’ would be hollow. And while Bruen does not require a ‘historical twin’ for a modern firearm regulation to pass muster, here the historical record does not even establish a historical cousin for California’s one-gun-a-month law.”
In early June, the NRA filed an amicus brief in the case arguing that the California law violates the Second Amendment for three reasons: The right to keep and bear arms includes the right to acquire firearms, 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.
Among other important points, the brief explained: “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. This practice is most clearly demonstrated by focusing on pistols. Pistols were often sold in matching pairs, ‘sometimes as a case of pistols or a brace of pistols.’”
It is likely that this ruling will be appealed by California.
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