From today's opinion in Nguyen v. Bonta, written by Judge Danielle Forrest and joined by Judges John Owens and Bridget Bade:
[The] "core Second Amendment right … 'wouldn't mean much' without the ability to acquire arms." Thus, we have "consistently held that the Second Amendment … 'protects ancillary rights necessary to the realization of the core right to possess a firearm for self-defense.'" While we have not defined "the precise scope" of protected ancillary rights, we have held "that the plain text of the Second Amendment only prohibits meaningful constraints on the right to acquire firearms."
To demonstrate this principle, we discuss two of our prior cases. Teixeira concerned a zoning ordinance that made it "virtually impossible to open a [new] gun store in unincorporated [areas of] Alameda County." We nonetheless concluded that the ordinance was permissible because "there were ten gun stores in Alameda County" and buyers could purchase firearms at a sporting goods store located "approximately 600 feet away from the proposed site of [the plaintiff's] planned store." We stated that "the Second Amendment does not elevate convenience and preference over all other considerations."
Similarly, B&L Productions concerned a California law banning firearm sales on state property. We explained that while "a ban on all sales of a certain type of gun or ammunition in a region generally implicates the Second Amendment, … a minor constraint on the precise locations within a geographic area where one can acquire firearms does not." And we upheld the challenged law because "[m]erely eliminating one environment where individuals may purchase guns does not constitute a meaningful constraint on Second Amendment rights when they can acquire the same firearms down the street."
The laws we considered in Teixeira and B&L Productions are plainly distinguishable from the one-gun-a-month law here. Limiting where firearms may be sold, when there are other reasonably available options, is a significantly lesser interference with an individual's ability to acquire (and therefore possess) firearms than banning the purchase of more than one firearm in a 30-day period.
