 Decision here Rhodes v. Becerra case info here T-shirt here (not my work) So Prop 63 passed back in 2016 and since July 1, 2017, Californians haven't been able to order ammo online. Well, they can but it has to ship to a dealer. Who then has to run a background check. And if you buy ammo in person, same deal. It's a nightmare. Olympic shooter Kim Rhode filed suit and US Federal Court Judge Roger T Benitiz, the same man who brought California Freedom Week for magazines, found against the state. In essence, he granted preliminary injunction against enforcing the ammo background check law. This looks to be the same as with the magazines. Until the state asked for him to stay the order, "high capacity" magazines were allowed to flood the state essentially nullifying the states ban. It's estimated that for that week, the overwhelming majority of "high capacity" magazines were shipped to California with other states taking lesser priority. So here, it looks like Benitiz did the same thing. Too bad there is such little ammo on the shelves of the nation's retailers. California may be sucking up ammo while they still can, before Benitiz is forced to stay his order. If so, good for California. Any cuts at the state's regime is good. Now about the stay, Benitz probably had to stay his magazine injunction pending appeal because if he didn't, the state would appeal it to a higher court. When he stayed his injunction, he got to write the terms, which literally declared any magazines bought in that time period were essentially legal to possess. The short version is that if people bought magazines while it was, per the court, legal to do so, the state couldn't go back and retroactively declare them illegal. This included any magazines already owned and not grandfathered by Prop 63 or whatever the assembly bill was (the bill was to embarrass Gov. Newsome by "stealing" his ballot initiative while he was running for governor). The state would have to prove that any magazines bought/imported after the ruling were done after the ruling, which would be nearly impossible to prove. That was the actual nail in the coffin for California's ban. By the way, the case was recently heard in an appeal and the judges seemed to be in our favor. So if past is prologue, it looks like California is due for an ammo freedom week. If "purchase" means money changing hands, Californians might buy ammo now and have it shipped later while it's in stock. Stay tuned to the gun blogs folks, we'll know a lot more by Monday.  |