The case involving California’s unconstitutional law banning firearms advertisements that “may be attractive to minors” might finally be coming to an end.

Last October, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case Safari Club International v. Bonta that the law, passed in June 2022 by the California Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, to be unconstitutional. But, as bureaucrats are wont to do, state officials appealed the ruling to the full 9th Circuit.

On Feb. 20, the court overwhelmingly rejected the request to have the full court consider the case. In fact, none of the judges on the court even requested that the court take a vote on the state’s petition to rehear it.

At odds is the law passed ostensibly to protect kids from firearms advertising. But the law was so overly broad that, according to NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, it even effectively banned advertising youth hunter education programs.

Safari Club International, along with the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation and So Cal Top Guns youth shooting organization, sued California to challenge the law that prohibits “firearm industry members” from advertising the use of firearms in a way that is “designed, intended, or reasonably appears to be attractive to minors.” SCI’s suit challenged the law as unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California refused to file an injunction against the law back in January 2023, leaving the restriction in place. At the time, the ruling prompted California Attorney General Rob Bonta to gloat about the victory.

“Today’s decision is another victory in our fight to protect California from this epidemic of senseless gun violence,” Bonta said in a press release following the ruling. “The idea of marketing dangerous weapons to kids is despicable, and I will not stand for it. Our children and families have endured enough fear and pain from endless gun violence tragedies—it’s time to end this. My office will continue fighting with every tool we have at our disposal to defend our state’s lifesaving gun safety laws.”

With the 9th Circuit now refusing to hear the case en banc, Bonta likely isn’t gloating any more. Unless the state chooses to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, where victory for Bonta and Newsom is unlikely, the case will be remanded to the district court to enter the preliminary injunction.

 

 

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

23 COMMENTS

  3. Lessee…two hundred years of “kids with guns”…Boy Scouts, high school rifle clubs, fathers teaching their kids to hunt, backyard plinking.

    20-ga shotguns marketed for use by kids as a safer option to 12-ga.

    A “JR-15” youth model designed to match a youth’s smaller frame for safe training for the AR-15 “America’s Rifle”.

    Even the Red Ryder BB rifle in A Christmas Story! Gasp and clutch the pearls!!

    Suddenly Newsom, Bonta, and the orcs with them want to convince the world the idea of someone under the age of 18 with a rifle in his/her hands is an abomination. Okay.

    • Anyone with a gun is an abomination, but they recognize to achieve a gun free society, you have to kill the culture of guns, starting with the young.

      • “…but they recognize to achieve a gun free society, you have to kill the culture of guns, starting with the young.”

        You’re right, but they’re doing a lousy job of it.

        With ‘Urban’ and ‘Rap’ music glorifying guns, and Hollywood cranking out movies chock-full of guns being used for good and evil, they are having a real problem with controlling their messaging.

        And to say nothing of the first-person-shooter video game industry.

        Let’s say they *somehow* manage to make games like ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Grand Theft Auto’ illegal. What are they gonna do about all the existing DVDs out there? Computers are only gonna get faster and more powerful, and that means future computers will do emulation just fine. That already happened with the upright video game machines of the 80s, a freeware software program called M.A.M.E. (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) was developed that allowed all of those games to be played into the future.

        They’ve lost the war, and they know it. The 9th circuit’s little pissy-fit over “Aloha Spirit” proves it… 🙂

    • Haz,

      I suspect my experience is like unto many others’ on this forum – i got me first firearm when i was 7 (a single shot, bolt-action, J.C. Higgins .22). And I IMMEDIATELY got training in how to use it. My friends and I were fairly adjacent to some open pasture/farmland and a local creek, and we would (a bunch of 8 year olds) frequently go hunting and shooting. If my dad had EVER seen me using that gun unsafely, I would have been lucky if he ONLY stuck it up my backside (the first time he took me out with the gun, we spent an hour on the homemade “range”, and I never got to fire a single shot).

      We do ourselves, and our children, a disservice by NOT training them, at a young age, in basic gun handling and gun safety. Schools should reinstitute firearm safety training, and rifle/pistol clubs and competitions. My kids were taught the basics around 10 years old. My youngest boy is now a certified RSO, certifies Handgun Safety Instructor, certified Large-bore and Small-bore Rifle Instructor, and a certified shotgun instructor (and (damn my ancient eyes!) he can shoot rings around me. The rest have chosen to follow the “guns are icky” route, and I’m fine with that (if you don’t like guns, stay away from them). But EVERY kid deserves the respect of at least familiarizing them with firearms, so they won’t be idiots about it in the future. Guns aren’t for everyone, but everyone should learn not to shoot their own d*ck off.

  4. As if little Tommy or Thomasina can’t peruse a multitude of images & content on the interwebz. Like all the time day & night. I guess the ruling class in Commiefornia just like to yell ” respect my authoritah!” Sheesh🙄

  5. Out of Control Gun Control has reduced The Second Amendment to a level below a pack of cancerous Marlboros. What happens with major Gun Control History illiterate states. If Gun owners don’t get busy educating Gun Control History illiterate America pretty soon there will be Gun owner water fountains, no Gun owners allowed signs, Gun owners served in back signs, Gun owners move to the back of the bus signs, gun owners picking cotton, Gun owners working on the chain gang…
    https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZcGwz3LhQ1A&feature=shared

    • Coincidentally, today I received an email from Google Cloud services touting their new Gemini AI functionality, asking me if I’m interested in learning how Gemini can make me more productive.

      Next to my keyboard’s Delete key is a red button with the description “Super Turbo Express Ticket to Hell Delete”. Use with discretion, such as when Google sends a white male a marketing email attempting to sell him a service that hates white males.

      • The google guy who created this stupid woke liberal racist thing was full on woke and delusional, and was a racist himself because of woke.

        That’s part of the left-wing, liberal, and woke agenda though. Re-write history, mold and control society and thinking, indoctrinate the younger generation, into something that serves them which is what communist marxist do, its what all communist marxist want. Such a system can not endure without a controllable and subservient population. In short though, this Google guy and Google represent a pretty good reason to own a gun for defense because eventually, like it has been in every version of ‘woke attempted revolution’ in the past, there is a pretty good chance these mentally ill people are out there and wanting to do harm to others if they get a chance. They are already all over tik-tok calling for those not like them to be attacked and stabbed and shot, expressing their desire to do harm.

        But anyway….

        Google APOLOGIZES After New AI Goes FULL RACIST & REFUSES To Put White People In Photos.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCoPUjuVjNY

        • They apologized? Well, that’s nice.

          Did they promise to change the system?

          “We’re working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately”

          Improve! Apparently it’s not “woke” enough.

  12. The problem isn’t kids reading or watching ads for guns, the problem is the parents not instructing them in the proper use of guns and what you do and don’t shoot at. Also their NOT teaching the kids that video games are just games and real life doesn’t work that way. In real life you can’t re-spawn and continue to shoot. You or your opponent is DEAD, permanently. and that has consequences.

  13. The politicians who take an oath to uphold and protect the constitution then turn around and want to infringe upon it need to be removed from office at the least, or tried for treason at the most.

  14. This idiot Bonta doesn’t have a clue. There have been methods that were effective over the centuries. Remove offenders from the general population. There are many ways to accomplish this. My favorite was penal transportation where they are sent to the other side of the globe. Here we are stuck with just letting them go. No more prison for felons.

Comments are closed.