The 9th Circuit(!) has ruled that California’s demand for background checks (and associated delays in obtaining) as a precondition for citizens of that State buying ammunition is unconstitutional.
Naturally, California’s Progressive-Democrat Governor, Gavin Newsom, is up in arms over that ruling:
Strong gun laws save lives—and today’s decision is a slap in the face to the progress California has made in recent years to keep its communities safer from gun violence. Californians voted to require background checks on ammunition and their voices should matter.
It’s a well-deserved slap in the face, though; in response to Newsom’s administration’s and State legislature’s own slap in the face of American citizens. What Newsom and his fellow Party syndicate members carefully ignore is that we already have a strong gun law—the strongest—in the form of our 2nd Amendment. Writing for the 9th Circuit, Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta tacitly reminded Newsom, et al., of this:
By subjecting Californians to background checks for all ammunition purchases, California’s ammunition background check regime infringes on the fundamental right to keep and bear arms[.]
She expanded on that [citations omitted]:
…a person who wants to keep an operable firearm must necessarily acquire ammunition. Because the right to keep and bear arms includes the right to keep operable arms, rules on ammunition acquisition implicate the plain text of the Second Amendment if they meaningfully constrain the right to keep operable arms.
We conclude that California’s ammunition background check meaningfully constrains the right to keep operable arms.
The 9th‘s ruling was on Rhode v Bonta, and it can be read here.