Fresh off a victory in which a federal appeals court struck California’s law limiting gun purchases to one every 30 days, the Firearms Policy Coalition is now pushing for the end of New Jersey’s “one-gun-a-month” law.
In mid-August, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its mandate in FPC’s victory over California’s rationing law, making it the first time the Circuit ever issued a final judgment striking down a law as unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The ruling followed California Attorney General Bonta’s rare move in which he chose not to ask the circuit to rehear the case en banc.
Now, the organization has New Jersey’s law rationing purchases to one a month directly in its sights. On September 14, in the case Struck v. Davenport, FPC and its co-plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment, asking the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey to declare the state’s law rationing handgun purchases unconstitutional and permanently enjoin its enforcement.
“The Second Amendment protects ‘Arms’—plural,” FPC President Brandon Combs said in a news release announcing the court action. “The government has no constitutional authority to ration the People’s rights, and politicians do not get to decide how many protected arms peaceable people may acquire in a month. We already defeated California’s similar ban, and now we are asking the court to eliminate New Jersey’s version of the same unconstitutional scheme.”
FPC’s motion argues constitutional text protects the right to “keep and bear Arms,” and courts across the country have recognized that the right necessarily protects the ability to acquire firearms. Because the plaintiffs seek to acquire handguns for lawful purposes, the motion argues that their conduct is presumptively protected, and New Jersey bears the burden of proving that its restriction meets the second Bruen standard—that it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
The motion also argues that the recent victory in the California case involved a very similar one-gun-a-month restriction. In that case, the 9th Circuit held that the Second Amendment protects both possession of multiple firearms and the ability to acquire firearms without meaningful constraints, concluding that the historical record did not establish even a ‘historical cousin’ for California’s law.
According to FPC, the New Jersey restriction is, in fact, a distinctly modern invention. According to FPC’s motion, the first handgun-rationing law was not enacted until 1975; only five states have ever enacted similar one-gun-a-month restrictions, and only New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia currently retain such laws.
As Combs pointed out, his organization said that, when filing the California case, it would not be the end of the battle against gun-rationing laws.
“Since then, we secured a final appellate victory eliminating California’s one-gun-a-month ban,” Combs concluded. “New Jersey is next—the State’s own experts cannot identify the representative historical tradition the Constitution requires because there isn’t one. Our FPC Grassroots Army and we will continue to Fight Forward and eliminate these immoral restrictions everywhere they exist so the People can exercise their rights when, where and how they choose.”
