SAN DIEGO - The stay of a San Diego federal judge's order blocking a law limiting California residents to purchasing one gun per month has been overturned by a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel.
The panel's one-sentence order released Thursday will immediately allow California residents to buy more than one gun per month.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office and the Department of Justice could not immediately be reached for comment Friday. It was uncertain whether they might seek reconsideration by a larger en banc 9th Circuit panel of judges.
Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, one of several plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in 2020, said in a statement, "This order allows our hard-won injunction to take effect and, unless the 9th Circuit issues a new stay, Californians may now apply to purchase multiple firearms within a 30-day period. FPC intends to make Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta respect Second Amendment rights whether they like it or not."
The law was intended to cut down on what's known as straw purchases, in which someone legally buys a gun, then gives it to someone else who is prohibited from possessing a firearm.
U.S. District Judge William Hayes in San Diego ruled the law unconstitutional in March, but issued a stay of his order while the California Attorney General's Office and Department of Justice appealed the decision.
The stay was later extended by the appellate court.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which altered the standard by which firearms- related cases could be analyzed, a number of gun laws have been ruled unconstitutional, while others that were previously upheld have been sent back to the lower courts for reanalysis. That decision holds that gun laws should be consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulations.
The plaintiffs argued there was no historical record of a prohibition on law-abiding citizens from buying more than one gun per month and through that lens, the law violates the Second Amendment.
The state argued the restriction does not impact a person's ability to bear arms and that the law addresses "unprecedented social concerns" such as gun trafficking and straw purchases that "did not exist during the Founding or Reconstruction eras to the same extent that they exist today."
In his ruling, Hayes wrote that the state did not meet its "burden of producing a `well-established and representative historical analogue' to the (one gun per month) law."
