The California Department of Justice’s proposed regulations implementing Senate Bill 704’s new background check requirement for firearm barrel transfers have drawn the ire of the Second Amendment Foundation.
According to the SAF, SB 704 is the first barrel-purchase background check law in the nation and has no historical analogue. Consequently, it is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
Since the state DOJ is proceeding with rulemaking despite that unconstitutionality, SAF has submitted formal comments on the rulemaking. Under the proposed rules, a “Standard Firearm Barrel Eligibility Check” would work much like the current ammunition check in the state: It looks for a matching entry in the Automated Firearms System (AFS). If there is no match, the buyer may use a Basic Check. The proposed regulations do not clearly tell dealers or customers what steps they can take to ensure they’re not prohibited from purchasing ammunition.
“California already prices and papers the right to keep and bear arms nearly out of reach,” Kostas Moros, SAF director of legal research and education, said in a news release announcing the comments submission. “Now it wants a background check just to buy a barrel. If the Department insists on building this system, it should not copy the ammunition regime’s worst feature: rejecting tens of thousands of law-abiding people for a name or address mismatch and never telling them they can still complete a Basic Check.”
In the comment letter, SAF recommends that a Standard Check rejection for no matching AFS record automatically proceed to a Basic Check, or that dealers at least be required to tell customers that such rejections are common and usually do not mean the buyer is prohibited. SAF warned that the same silence in the AFS has led to mass false rejections of ammunition background checks.
California DOJ’s own data in Rhode v. Bonta showed that from January through June 2023, 58,087 people were rejected on AFS ammunition checks for records mismatches, while only 141 were denied as prohibited persons—about 412 law-abiding buyers blocked for every prohibited person stopped. Roughly one in 10 checks failed, and more than a third of those wrongly rejected in January 2023 still had not completed an ammunition purchase five months later.
“It should be standard practice for a buyer rejected due to no matching AFS Record to automatically proceed to the Basic Firearm Barrel Eligibility Check of § 4307,” SAF recommended in the comment letter. “At minimum, the customer should be advised that a Standard Check denial is common and usually not due to prohibited person status, and that they should try the Basic Check. This should be effectuated either through edits to the Proposed Rule, or via formal CADOJ guidance to all California gun dealers.”
Ultimately, SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said the scheme is just another layer in a stack of fees, roster limits, excise taxes and paperwork that are meant to “do nothing more than keep Californians from exercising their full Second Amendment rights.”
“It’s a sad state of affairs when, by the CADOJ’s own admission, the AFS is a complete failure, but that still doesn’t stop fearmongering lawmakers from continuing to implement unconstitutional laws and regulations,” Kraut concluded. “Unfortunately, they cannot undo an unconstitutional statute by regulation, but they can certainly stop making a bad law even worse.”
More from TTAG on firearm barrel background checks:
Gun Group Fighting Back Against Colorado Measure Regulating Gun Barrel Purchases
