The 9th Circuit Says California's One-Per-Month Limit on Gun Purchases Is Unconstitutional

The appeals court concluded that the restriction impinges on the right to arms and is not consistent with the historical tradition of firearm regulation.

A California law that limits gun purchases to one per month is unconstitutional on its face, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled last Friday. The three-judge panel's unanimous conclusion illustrates the continuing impact of the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which clarified the constitutional test for gun control laws.

"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," Judge Danielle J. Forrest, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote in Nguyen v. Bonta, "and California's law is not supported by our nation's tradition of firearms regulation." The opinion was joined by Judge Bridget S. Bade, who also was appointed by Trump, and by Judge John B. Owens, who was appointed by Barack Obama.

The law at issue in Nguyen, originally enacted in 1999, was aimed at preventing "straw purchases"—transactions in which people buy multiple firearms and transfer them to individuals who are not legally allowed to possess them. The restriction, which originally applied only to handguns but was eventually extended to all firearms, applies to all buyers with a few exceptions, including law enforcement agencies, private security companies, and movie studios.

The plaintiffs in this case, including individual gun owners, two firearm retailers, and three gun rights groups, argued that California's restriction violated the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Last year, U.S. District Judge William Q. Hayes, a George W. Bush appointee, agreed that the law failed the Bruen test, and the 9th Circuit upheld that decision.

"When the Second Amendment's plain text covers an individual's conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct," the Supreme Court said in Bruen. "To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation's historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual's conduct falls outside the Second Amendment's 'unqualified command.'"

California "suggests that the Second Amendment only guarantees a right to possess a single firearm, and that Plaintiffs' rights have not been infringed because they already possess at least one firearm," Forrest noted. "California is wrong. The Second Amendment protects the right of the people to 'keep and bear Arms,' plural. This 'guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons.' And not only is 'Arms' stated in the plural, but this term refers to more than just guns. It includes other weapons and instruments used for defense. California's interpretation would mean that the Second Amendment only protects possession of a single weapon of any kind. There is no basis for interpreting the constitutional text in that way."

California also argued that its law does not ban possession of multiple firearms, provided 30 days elapse between purchases. "We have held that the Second Amendment does protect against meaningful constraints on the acquisition of firearms through purchase," Forrest wrote. "And if the Second Amendment's plain text protects the ability to possess multiple arms, which we conclude that it does, then it also protects the ability to acquire multiple arms….By categorically prohibiting citizens from purchasing more than one firearm of any kind in a 30-day period, California is infringing on citizens' exercise of their Second Amendment rights."

Forrest noted that such a burden would be plainly unacceptable if it were applied to other rights guaranteed by the Constitution. "We are not aware of any circumstance where government may temporally meter the exercise of constitutional rights in this manner," she wrote. "And we doubt anyone would think government could limit citizens' free-speech right to one protest a month, their free-exercise right to one worship service per month, or their right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures to apply only to one search or arrest per month."

If "the frequency with which constitutional rights can be exercised could be regulated in this manner without infringement," Forrest wondered, "what would limit government from deciding that a right need only be available every six months or once a year or at any other interval it chooses? California had no answer to this concern at oral argument."

Having concluded that California's 30-day rule impinges on conduct covered by the Second Amendment's "plain text," Forest turned to the question of whether California had shown that the restriction is "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." California proposed several historical analogs, most of which bore little resemblance to the law it was defending. The closest example it could find was a colonial Virginia law that prohibited "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."

That law, Forrest noted, "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. This limitation has different implications for the right protected by the Second Amendment—preservation of citizens' ability to defend themselves—than California's one-gun-a-month law. Thus, we conclude it is not similar enough to support California's law."

Even if the Virginia law were "relevantly similar," Forrest added, "one tree does not make a forest." She noted that "the Virginia colony enacted this law 100 years before the founding, and the restriction seemingly only lasted a few years." By the time the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, she noted, "it was common for Americans" to carry multiple firearms.

California argued that the appeals court should cut it some slack because "governments during the founding and Reconstruction simply did not have to confront the social problems created by the immediate commercial availability of firearms for large purchases." Since "large-scale firearms trafficking and straw purchasing" facilitated by modern production and distribution systems are relatively recent developments, it said, you would not expect to find early examples of laws similar to California's.

Although "it cannot reasonably be disputed that firearm manufacturing and availability are different today than they were in our early history," Forrest said, "arms trafficking is not a new problem." From the 17th century "into the Civil War era," she noted, legislators were keen to prevent the sale of guns to people they deemed dangerous. While "the modern problems that California identifies as justification for its one-gun-a-month law are perhaps different in degree from past problems," she said, "they are not different in kind."

The Second Amendment "expressly protects the right to possess multiple arms," Forrest wrote. "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."

Owens, who joined Forrest's opinion in full, wrote a brief concurrence to emphasize that the decision applies only to this particular law. "It does not address other means of
restricting bulk and straw purchasing of firearms, which our nation's tradition of firearm regulation may support," he wrote.

The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), one of the plaintiffs in the case, welcomed the decision as a blow against overreaching gun control. "As this decision shows, the right to keep and bear arms cannot be limited by an arbitrary cap on the number of guns that can be acquired at one time," said FPC President Brandon Combs. "We have a right to buy more than one gun at a time just as we have a right to buy more than one bible at a time. FPC is proud to have secured the rights of peaceable people and will continue to fight forward until we eliminate immoral laws like this everywhere."