California’s COVID Gun Store Shutdowns Ruled Illegal

Above, a gun store in Albuquerque. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

New Mexico Governor "Malevolent Michelle" Lujan Grisham ought to take a good hard look at a California federal court ruling.

Back in 2020, she shut down New Mexico's gun stores when the pandemic struck the state, calling them "non-essential".

California counties of Los Angeles and Ventura did the same and now a panel with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that those actions violated people's constitutional rights.

According to the Long Beach Post:

Two California counties violated the Constitution’s right to keep and bear arms when they shut down gun and ammunition stores in 2020 as nonessential businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

Officials in Los Angeles and Ventura counties had separately won lower court decisions saying gun stores were not exempt from broader shutdown orders aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus early in the pandemic.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected both lower court rulings.

The Second Amendment “means nothing if the government can prohibit all persons from acquiring any firearm or ammunition,” Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote. “But that’s what happened in this case.”

Because buyers can obtain guns only by personally going to gun stores in California, Ventura County’s 48-day closure of gun shops, ammunition shops and firing ranges “wholly prevented law-abiding citizens in the County from realizing their right to keep and bear arms,” he wrote.

To read the full story, go here.