SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Two California counties violated people’s constitutional right to own guns when they ordered firearms and ammunition stores to close in 2020, determining they were non-essential businesses during the pandemic. of COVID-19, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
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Authorities in Los Angeles and Ventura counties had obtained two separate lower court rulings in their favor, finding that gun stores were not exempt from general closure orders to slow the spread of the coronavirus in the early months of the pandemic.
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A three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the two lower court rulings.
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The second constitutional amendment “means nothing if the government can prohibit everyone from acquiring a firearm or ammunition,” Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote. “But that’s what happened in this case.”
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Because California mandates that buyers can only purchase guns by going to a gun store in person, the 48-day closure of Ventura County gun stores, ammunition stores, and shooting ranges “completely prevented law-abiding citizens from in the county exercised their right to own a firearm,” the magistrate wrote.
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Meanwhile, bike shops were allowed to remain open as essential businesses, he noted. The panel relied on the same logic in the Los Angeles County case, where gun stores were closed for 11 days.
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The decision indicates that governments “cannot use a crisis to trample on the constitutional rights of citizens,” said Michael Jean, director of the Office of Legal Counsel of the National Rifle Association (NRA, for its acronym in English) who presented the lawsuit in the Los Angeles County case. It also sued Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties over their restrictions in Northern California, but the latter three counties were removed from the lawsuit once they revoked their closure orders.
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