The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals isn't known for making solid decisions regarding the Second Amendment. In fact, it usually upholds every gun control scheme it can find, historically, but that changed on Thursday.
The case before the court dealt with California's requirement for background checks on the sale of firearm ammunition. It was touted as a major move forward in reducing violent crime, but what it really did was just make everything harder for law-abiding gun owners, like just about everything else the state does.
One individual negatively impacted was Olympic shooting gold medalist Kim Rhode, who suddenly found it next to impossible to get the ammo she needed for her training.
Needless to say, a lawsuit was filed with Rhode as one of the plaintiffs, and the state of California isn't really thrilled with the outcome;
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that California’s law requiring background checks for people purchasing ammunition is unconstitutional.
The decision upholds a San Diego federal judge’s previous ruling that struck the law down.
Thursday’s ruling stems from a lawsuit brought in San Diego by a coalition of gun owners and gun rights groups that alleged the law infringed on the Second Amendment rights of California residents.
The California Attorney General’s Office, however, argued the law was a safety measure that prevented people who shouldn’t have firearms and ammunition from obtaining them.
The law was struck down twice by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, of San Diego, who has frequently ruled in favor of firearm advocates seeking to overturn state laws regarding gun and ammunition ownership or purchases.
In Thursday’s ruling, which upheld Benitez’s permanent injunction blocking the law, Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote in the majority opinion that California’s background check requirement was not consistent with the country’s historical traditions of firearm regulation, a finding that reflects a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said firearm cases should be evaluated based on how other firearm cases have been decided historically.
Governor Gavin Newsom took the news about how you'd expect.
Update: Newsom is mad https://t.co/gOw7y4KMjm pic.twitter.com/gqzzKwwyKd
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) July 24, 2025
It's funny how he called killing an unconstitutional law "a slap in the face." As if every bit of gun control he's supported over the years wasn't a slap in the face to the Founding Fathers.
Weird.
The thing is, while Newsom is touting this as essential to keep ammunition away from criminals who aren't supposed to have guns, one has to ask why would you need this if background checks are so powerful? If a criminal can bypass background checks for guns — and California has universal background checks — then how would they be unable to bypass background checks for an unserialized item like ammunition?
Somehow, gun control advocates have never gotten around to answering that one.
Again, weird.
The Ninth Circuit, strangely enough, made the right decision when it came to this law. The Second Amendment doesn't give the leeway California keeps pretending it does. Now, this terrible law has been struck down.
I expect the state to attempt to appeal to an en banc panel, but we'll have to see if the court will agree or just tell him to go pound sand.
If the state attorney general takes this to the Supreme Court, though, I'm fairly sure he won't like the outcome.
