Court Rejects California Law Requiring Ammo Background Check (1)

A California law requiring background checks for ammunition purchases is unconstitutional, a split federal appeals court said Thursday, striking down the state’s first-in-the-nation gun-control effort.

“Because none of the historical analogues proffered by California is within the relevant time frame, or is relevantly similar to California’s ammunition background check regime,” the law fails to satisfy the two-step test under N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, Judge Sandra S. Ikuta said for the majority of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The ruling is a blow to Democratic California lawmakers who have passed some of the strictest gun regulations in the US. They’ve sought to blunt the impact of the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Bruen, which set a new two-part test for analyzing Second Amendment challenges to gun measures and overturned a New York law restricting public handgun carry.

The California law, mandating ammunition purchasers undergo and pay for background checks before buying bullets, was initially passed by California voters as Proposition 63 in a 2016 state ballot initiative and an amended version was passed by the California legislature. It’s been tied up in courts as California gun owners, ammo retailers, and a California gun association challenge it on Second Amendment grounds.

Plaintiffs include Olympic shooter Kim Rhode, who argued the measure unlawfully infringes the right to keep and bear arms.

The background checks don’t pass constitutional muster under Bruen because requiring them implicates the right to bear arms and there’s no historical analogue for such a measure, Ikuta said.

The Second Amendment encompasses ammunition since a gun isn’t operable without it, satisfying step one of the Bruen test.

The four historical analogues California pointed to in support of the law also failed to convince the majority that they were relevantly similar to the background check regime, the inquiry called for at Bruen‘s second step. The examples—which included loyalty oath requirements and loyalist disarmament at the Founding and during Reconstruction, 19th-century concealed carry permitting requirements, Founding era surety laws on people deemed to be a danger to the community, and licensing and recordkeeping requirements for vendors of gunpowder and firearms—lacked the same “why” and “how” as the California law.

A footnote in Bruen saying “shall issue” gun licensing schemes are constitutional as long as they’re not abusive doesn’t mean the ammo law can survive. Bruen struck down a New York handgun licensing scheme that said the state “may” issue the license, giving it more discretion than a shall-issue law.

But Bruen still doesn’t shed any light on the constitutionality of an ammunition background check regime that is meaningfully distinguishable from a shall-issue licensing regime, the majority said.

The majority also held that the two-step test under Bruen applies to both facial and as-applied challenges to a law under the Second Amendment.

The Ninth Circuit last year allowed the law to remain in effect while California Attorney General Rob Bonta appealed a trial court ruling permanently blocking the measure. The majority’s ruling Thursday affirmed the lower court’s permanent injunction.

New York’s ammo background check measure, passed in 2022, is on appeal in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. A federal district court in New York in 2024 said the measure is constitutional.

Judges Bridget S. Bade joined the majority.

Judge Jay S. Bybee dissented, saying that the law only imposes a de minimis delay and a small fee and can’t possibly meaningfully constrain a person’s Second Amendment right. He also said California’s “shall-issue” licensing regime is presumptively legal, and the plaintiffs failed to rebut that presumption.

“By the majority’s reasoning, any regulation of sales of ammunition is presumptively unlawful, unless the state can produce an identical historical twin,” Bybee said.

Michel & Associates, PC and Clement & Murphy, PLLC represent the gun owners.

The case is Rhode v. Bonta, 9th Cir., No. 24-542, 7/24/25.