On the Shawn Ryan podcast July 14, Gov. Gavin Newsom insisted he supported the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. He even accepted a gift Sig Sauer P365 XMACRO pistol. “This is fabulous,” the governor said. “I’m not anti-gun at all. I’m just for gun safety, common sense. The vast majority of folks on the right and the left agree.”
That’s one way to frame things. Over the years, Newsom has backed numerous gun-control laws in this state. One was Proposition 63, which voters passed in 2019 with strong support from Newsom when he was lieutenant governor. Among other things, according to the ballot summary voters read, it required “a background check” and “Department of Justice authorization to purchase ammunition.”
On July 24 a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck that down. “California’s ammunition background check regime infringes on the fundamental right to keep and bear arms,” wrote Judge Sandra S. Ikuta for the two-judge majority in the case Rhoda v. Bonta. The rejection came after the court just a month earlier threw out California’s “one-gun-a-month” restriction. Both cases cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, which vigorously upheld the Second Amendment.
“Californians voted to require background checks on ammunition,” Newsom retorted on X on July 25. “Their voices should matter.”
“Prop. 63 was badly explained to the voters by Newsom and others,” Sam Paredes told us; he’s the executive director of Gun Owners of California, which filed an amicus brief in the case. “A vote of the people cannot get rid of the Constitution.”
Paredes said he hopes the full, 11-member Ninth Circuit doesn’t take up an expected appeal by Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta. Ironically, Paredes said, Newsom has signed into law so many anti-gun laws he couldn’t bring back from Tennessee the gun Shawn Ryan gave him.
Like the First Amendment “freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,” the Second Amendment is a bedrock of liberty, and cannot be curtailed by mere majority vote. The Bill of Rights is there for a reason. Gavin Newsom, an aspiring presidential candidate, should understand that.
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