Stay granted in California ammo case, restricting sales again using criticized database
After issuing an injunction halting California’s ammunition background check program, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has granted a stay, which effectively reinstates the state’s faulty database system until further notice.
The National Rifle Association, which had hailed the injunction as a victory for Second Amendment rights, issued a news release publicizing the Friday stay.
“This means that the same restrictions that have been previously in effect regarding ammunition in California are back for the time being,” the NRA’s lobbying wing said.
The law, which was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2016 and took effect in July, requires Californians to pass an in-store background check before buying ammunition, which involves running buyers’ names through a California Department of Justice database that tracks legal purchases of guns.
The system has been roundly criticized by guns rights activists due to its finicky nature and tendency to unfairly limit legal purchases of ammunition.
U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez, who blocked the law on Wednesday, said in his ruling that the state’s program has been used to “systematically prohibit or deter an untold number of law-abiding California citizen-residents from undergoing the required background checks.”
Ammunition buyers have said that the system is rife with glitches. Oftentimes, information in the system didn’t match up with buyers’ identification cards, which must be reviewed by vendors per the law. Some were forced to buy a new gun in order to purchase ammunition for the guns they already owned.
A review by The Sacramento Bee in December found that nearly one in five buyers were denied the ability to legally purchase ammunition due to the law. Of the 345,547 background checks performed, the system rejected 62,000 prospective ammo purchases because information hadn’t been entered into the Department of Justice gun registration database.
“California’s new ammunition background check law misfires and the Second Amendment rights of California citizens have been gravely injured,” Benitez said in his now-stayed injunction.
Benitez also noted that 188 purchases were stopped because a potential buyer was prohibited from owning ammunition, but in the first seven months, 16.4 percent of the time the system rejected otherwise qualified persons.
“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,” Benitez said.
The injunction also struck down a ban on mail-order ammunition sales, passed via Proposition 63 in 2016. That restriction is once again in effect, severely limiting Californians’ ability to buy bullets during the coronavirus pandemic, as only essential travel is permitted and person-to-person contact is discouraged. Most gun stores in the state, however, remain open, on a county-by-county basis.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed a motion to stay the injunction shortly after it was filed.
“Temporarily staying the order for a short time longer will cause no significant harm to plaintiffs, who have been living with the status quo for 10 months (or over two years in the case of the restrictions on importation and direct shipping),” Becerra wrote in his motion. “And a stay will promote public safety by preventing prohibited persons from easily purchasing ammunition over the internet or from their local vendor.”
