(25 Jul 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Burlingame, California – 25 July 2025
1. Various of John Parkin showing guns and ammunition in his store
2. SOUNDBITE (English) John Parkin, owner, Coyote Point Armory:
"When someone comes in to buy ammunition, they come in and they ask for what they want. They have to give us their driver’s license, passport or birth certificate if they don’t have a Real ID."
3. Hand holding bullets
4. SOUNDBITE (English) John Parkin, owner, Coyote Point Armory:
"Instead, where every time you come in to purchase, you have to go through a background check."
5. Hand holding bullets
6. SOUNDBITE (English) John Parkin, owner, Coyote Point Armory:
"Many gun owners can’t buy ammo because they don’t have a gun that’s registered in the California database. So they’re legal to own guns, they’re law abiding citizens and they’re turned away because they don’t have one of their guns in the California database."
7. Various of bullets
8. SOUNDBITE (English) John Parkin, owner, Coyote Point Armory:
"So yesterday, the Ninth Circuit determined that California and the scheme that it has for background checks is unconstitutional."
9. Various of bullets in and out of boxes
10. SOUNDBITE (English) John Parkin, owner, Coyote Point Armory:
"It’s unconstitutional for several reasons. Number one, out-of-state buyers cannot buy ammo in the state of California. They cannot do a background check on these people, so therefore we cannot sell ammo to them. Number two, people that actually own guns in California that may have bought their guns 20, 25 years ago and have no need to buy another gun are not in the California database, thus they’re not eligible to buy ammo either."
11. Rifles displayed on wall
12. SOUNDBITE (English) John Parkin, owner, Coyote Point Armory:
"Yeah, the law did not make the community any safer whatsoever. People are gonna get what they want and I mean, at the end of the day, you can make your own bullets. So it doesn’t stop anyone from getting anything."
13. Rifles displayed on wall
STORYLINE:
A voter-backed California law requiring background checks for people who buy bullets is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday in a blow to the state’s efforts to combat gun violence.
In upholding a 2024 ruling by a lower court, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law violates the Second Amendment. Voters passed the law in 2016 and it took effect in 2019.
Many states, including California, make people pass a background check before they can buy a gun. California went a step further by requiring a background check, which costs either $1 or $19 depending on eligibility, every time someone buys bullets.
Last year, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez decided that the law was unconstitutional because if people can’t buy bullets, they can’t use their guns for self-defense.
The 9th Circuit agreed. Writing for two of the three judges on the appellate panel, Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta said the law “meaningfully constrains" the constitutional right to keep arms by forcing gun owners to get rechecked before each purchase of bullets.
“The right to keep and bear arms incorporates the right to operate them, which requires ammunition,” the judge wrote.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who supported the background checks, decried the court’s decision.
"Californians voted to require background checks on ammunition and their voices should matter," Newsom said in a statement.
Chuck Michel, president and general counsel of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, called the law “absurdly restrictive.”
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