SAF Asks SCOTUS to Overturn California’s Gun Show Law

California is where gun rights go to die.

Lawmakers there have no respect for the people’s right to keep and bear arms. The movie industry’s? That’s a whole other ballgame, but for private individuals who just want to have a firearm, it’s a huge problem for most lawmakers.

One target of the state has been gun shows. While they can’t entirely shut them down, they’ve done everything they could to make it as hard as possible to hold gun shows, which aren’t just about selling guns but are also good ways for gun rights advocates to connect with one another, which is probably a big chunk of why anti-gunners hate it so much.

Now, the Second Amendment Foundation is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the measure.

From a press release:

The Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in a long-running challenge of California’s restrictive gun control policies regarding gun shows have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review in a case known as B&L Productions, Inc. v. Newsom.

SAF is joined by the California Rifle & Pistol Association, South Bay Rod & Gun Club, Asian Pacific American Gun Owners Association, Second Amendment Law Center, L.A.X. Firing Range, B&L Productions—for whom the case is named—and several private citizens. They are represented by attorneys Donald Kilmer at Kilmer Law Offices in Caldwell, Idaho, and C.D. Michel, Anna M. Barvir and Tiffany D. Cheuvront at Michel & Associates in Long Beach, California.

The case involves questions about First and Second Amendment rights, and whether the state can adopt laws and policies which abridge and impair those rights.

“We are at a point where California has essentially ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2022 that eliminated the use of ‘judicial balancing tests’ when deciding Second Amendment claims,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “while trampling on the First Amendment protections of speech which is necessary for the commerce of lawful products.”

“California’s laws and policies are being used to prevent gun owners, who are honest and peaceable citizens, from congregating and conducting lawful commerce on public property,” noted SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “If the state is allowed to continue, neither the First nor Second Amendments are safe from California’s legal choke hold. We are hopeful the Court will grant certiorari.”

The truth is that criminals aren’t buying guns at gun shows. 

Even if they were somehow finding unlicensed people selling parts of their collection at a given gun show–which there’s little evidence they’re even attending, mind you–wouldn’t the state’s universal background check law be sufficient to keep them from buying the firearms in question? I mean, let’s be real for a second here. Anyone at a gun show selling guns is going to be kind of obvious. It’s not the best place for a black market gun deal, now is it?

No, this is and has always been about making things more difficult for lawful gun owners and gun buyers but also for gun rights groups that can use these shows to reach out to people and help them understand both what their rights actually are and how the state generally takes a massive dump on them at every opportunity.

That’s the real sin. 

If people know what the state is doing, how it’s ignoring the Constitution, they might decide to stop it, and we can’t have that, now can we?