Quote of the Day
In the first half of last year, 589,087 individuals traveled to an ammunition vendor to buy ammunition. They proved their citizenship and residency with identification documents and paid for a background check. The State’s computers rejected 58,087 or 11% of them. This is an average of 322 individuals rejected every day. How many of the 58,087 needed ammunition to defend themselves against an impending criminal threat and how many were simply preparing for a sporting event, we will never know. What is known is that in almost all cases, the 322 individuals that are rejected each day are being denied permission to freely exercise their Second Amendment right — a right which our Founders instructed shall not be infringed.
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If any background check system satisfies Bruen’s footnote nine description of a scheme put to abusive ends, as opposed to the system originally approved by the voters, this may be it.
HON. ROGER T. BENITEZ
United States District Judge
January 30, 2024
KIM RHODE, et al., v. ROB BONTA
See also BREAKING! Huge Win In Rhode v. Bonta – CRPA.
Guess the percentage of prohibited persons convicted out of those 58,087 who were rejected. If you said anything more than 0.1% you are out of touch with reality. You should know this sort of thing because this is typical for government laws like this, such as Brady background checks done by the Feds. The actual numbers is ten times lower that that. It is 0.01%.
Special Agent Sidney Jones provided case dispositions for prohibited persons denied the purchase of ammunition between July 1, 2019 and January 31, 2020. During those seven months, 770 ammunition buyers were rejected as prohibited persons. At least sixteen of the 770 persons rejected were later determined to have been incorrectly identified as prohibited persons and should have been authorized to purchase ammunition. See Rhode, 445 F. Supp. 3d at 924. Agent Jones states that those 770 background check rejections prompted 51 investigations that resulted in firearms, magazines, or ammunition seizures. From those 51 investigations, 15 individuals were arrested. In the end, the government obtained four felony and two misdemeanor convictions.
Spoiler alert!
It is all good reading, but the happy ending is (emphasis added):
Therefore, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that:
Defendant Attorney General Rob Bonta, and his officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and those persons in active concert or participation with him, and those duly sworn state peace officers and federal law enforcement officers who gain knowledge of this injunction order or know of the existence of this injunction order, are enjoined from implementing or enforcing the ammunition sales background check provisions found in California Penal Code §§ 30352 and 30370(a) through (e), and the ammunition anti-importation provisions found in §§ 30312(a) and (b) and 30314(a), as well as the criminal enforcement of California Penal Code §§ 30312(d), 30314(c), and 30365(a).