Tracy Rifle (courtesy revealnews.com)

“In a rare legal challenge converging the First and Second amendments, a California gun store owner’s bid to continue advertising handguns has been denied by a federal judge, ending a temporary agreement between the store and the state Department of Justice to not enforce a nearly 100-year-old law that bans advertising handguns in public,” revealnews.com reports. The rest of the article details the travesty that is the judge’s ruling, which acknowledges gun store owner Michael Baryla’s First Amendment right to free speech while upholding the ban on the posters because it “dampens [the] demand for emotion-driven impulse purchases of handguns.” Barely’s continuing the fight. And how. Check out his reaction . . .

If [California Attorney General Kamala] Harris forces Baryla to remove the photos, he said he would cover them up, “creatively, of course,” until the case is decided.

“We have some ideas,” he said, including blurring the images and adding lettering on top that says, “The DOJ doesn’t want you to see this,” as a way to redact the handgun images.

“We’ll do something to piss them off,” Baryla said.

Baryla’s in-your-face defense of the First and Second Amendment earns TTAG’s Gun Hero of the Day Award. ‘Nuff said.

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56 COMMENTS

        • California couldn’t PAY Mexico enough to take it back, literally, you seen our debt?

        • I seem to recall reading that Hispanics are now the majority race in California, or will soon be, so Mexico has no reason to buy it back–the majority will vote for annexation.

      • They’re already the majority. Just heard it over the radio the other week.

        They’ve said for years that they would take the state back without firing a shot… Well shit, look how far they’ve come thanks to our open border, entitlement programs out the ass, and a half assed effort to return them to the shit hole that they came from.

        • You missed something. The farmers are complaining of a labor shortage and want more Mexican transient workers. California not only WANTS an open border, it NEEDS an open border.

      • That would defeat the purpose of the Mexican government lobbying so hard to send its citizens out of their own country and into CA. They’d be taking them all right back and it would be Mexico’s problem again.

    • A petition to split the state into 6 parts has enough signatures to go to ballot now. I’ll be voting for it.

      • I put my name on it too. Hell, split us into 3 states: SoCal, costal cal, and central California. Give the liberals their utopia and let the working part of the state keep it’s values. We aren’t all wicked… Or liberals…

        • Pretty much everything north of the Sacramento to San Francisco line is majority conservative except a few libby enclaves like Napa, Sonoma, Healdsburg, etc. I moved to California to live in one of the far northern counties and felt right a home (I am from the Deep South). The sheriff there advised me that he could not do his job without armed citizenry. He encouraged gun ownership, hunted with all of us, and was a major contributor to the gun owner groups all over the county. It is surely a separate place from Southern California by more than miles.

          I was then transferred to the Bay Area and have never met such rude, impossible, and horrible people. I live 20 miles from the nearest town, on a farm, and my neighbors complain to the Sheriff’s Office about my target practicing, my dogs barking at and “frightening the poor” deer and occasional bear that wanders through my front pasture, etc. I have even seen someone video taping customers coming in and out of a gun store for what purpose I do not know. I saw a man and wife taking photos of a logger at work one day, saying that they were documenting him committing “rape in the name of commerce”. The place is a MESS. I am all for a Constitutional Congress to begin formulating plans to remove Northern California (the REAL Northern California, not what CalHippies SAY is Northern California) from the State. Then, the majority voting illegal aliens in Southern California can attempt to return it, as they have publicly stated, to Mexico (as long as they take their liberal socialists pals with them).

      • The longer that quake takes, the worse it will be when it does happen. And it’s way overdue in LosF-ingAngeles (and outlying metastatic parts of the tumor it is) based on analyses of physical evidence as to how often “Big Ones” occur.

        It will likely push 8.0, and if they don’t pull their heads out of their asses and take some precautions, the infrastructure will be hosed. For one thing, the water supply will likely be cut off.

  5. The judge denied the temporary injunction simply to maintain the status quo pending trial. Other than that, he concluded that the State had utterly failed to carry its case. So either Kamala has to come up with some evidence, get creative or, as is implicit in the Court’s ruling, settle the case under threat of a permanent injunction. The fact is that the statute was enacted to discourage “the lesser classes” from buying guns, obviously to protect their white superiors.

    As an aside, there is no such thing as an “impulse by” in California–we have a ten day waiting period between the purchase and the pick up.

    • “dampens [the] demand for emotion-driven impulse purchases of handguns.”

      I would think “dampening” someone who is an impulse gun buyer would tend to pis them off… unless it was really hot out I suppose. Then being “more damp” might feel good.

  6. Just save the northern wine country and sell it damn back. I could quote Cankles Hillary but alas, kudos to those that choose not go down quietly in Kaliforniastan.

  7. Woah, wait a minute. I think he’s just being an attention whore like all those OCers… There’s a right and a wrong way to do this… I don’t see the need… He’s doing more harm than good… I support the 1st and 2nd Amendments, but…

    • He isn’t being an attn whore, he’s helping to get rid of pointless law. On top of that, the calguns foundation and other groups are also in on this case. This is more than someone bitching and moaning.

      Perhaps if you were stuck in this communist shit hole like the rest of us, you would appreciate the work that he and so many others are doing to get some rights back…

        • Wait… He was paraphrasing the judge… My bad Dustin. I get a little worked up about politics on the home front. Completely blanked out on the fact that the judge pulled the “meh” card.

    • Actually I was riffing off of the last few lines of the article about him being “in your face” and that’s good, contrasted with the usual stuff we hear about OCers being “in your face” and that’s bad…

      It’s good to get in the guvthugs’ faces about one thing, but not the other… We’re either going to unite, one day, some day, or we’re not…

  8. The store is in Tracy. Nice place. Bought a PredOBR from them about a year ago or so.

    • I have bought two guns, as well as a bunch of ammo and accessories, from this store. I only heard of it because of this case.

      Side note, Tracy Rifle and Pistol is one of the nicest gun stores I have ever been into. The staff is absolutely wonderful, the opposite of your stereotypical “gun store staff.”

  11. Put a small black bar over the manufacturer name like they do to people’s eyes when releasing photos of those who wish to remain anonymous.

    Or put a thong on the gun. Kinky strings being pulled everywhere!

  12. Take down the photo and put up photos of women’s breasts. Nude of course. Large oversized ones.
    Then advertise 44’s for sale…

  13. I will say that Tracy Rifle and Pistol is willing to be on the edge of what is legal and push the limits. California previously had a “loop hole” related to single shot target pistols that allowed people to purchase non-allowed pistols by going through some some technical gymnastics and Tracy Rifle and Pistol was definitely willing to help get just about any pistol through these hoops. When the they passed a law to close the loop hole, I bought a gun every month for the rest of the year through them. A lot of FFLs in the area didn’t want to be involved in this “gray area”. Honestly I was worried about heir business after the new law, since so much of their business seemed to come from the single shot exemption. So, I do think they really are willing to push boundaries before gunfights.

    (For those who don’t know, in CA you can only buy one handgun per month, and there is a list of guns approved for sale in CA that basically cannot be added to. This list is specific down to color, so you can buy a black Gen 3 Glock 19, but not a Gen 4 one or a FDE Gen 3…)

    • Hi Tim,

      Mike Baryla is a good friend. I was one of the key developers (exploiters) of the Single Shot Exemption. It was first done to get AR/AK pistols into CA market legally, then as the Roster tightened up and people wanted more, we though “Why not more Sigs and Glock Gen 4s and 1911s?” etc.

      [See https://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showthread.php?t=441766%5D

      The Single Shot Exemption was so legal we have recordings of DOJ staff telling gunshop staff how they wanted to see it done “legally”. It was also used by FBI agents to get off-Roster handguns.

      If there were a grey area, 150-200+ CA FFLs would be closed down instantly by DOJ. I personally know CA ATF
      found this quite hilarious, too.

      It was finally so legal that AB1964 was passed to block conversions of guns that were already semiauto, essentially killing the bulk of it.

      If you’d like to help Take Down the Roster thru sound 2A litigation in a case run by Alan Gura (of Heller v DC and McDonald v Chicago) fame help out at:

      https://www.calgunsfoundation.org/roster

      Thanks & regards,
      Bill Wiese
      Cofounder, The Calguns Foundation.

  14. Hmm. It is best not to upset a bureaucracy. They have long memories and are best described psychologically as petty, vindictive, and spiteful.

    You will have your win but it will be a Phyrric victory. Watch as the shop will have sudden building or property code violations that will require very expensive remediation.

  15. To Whomever This May Concern

    If SCOTUS can uphold the First Amendment rights for the Westboro Baptist Church to continue their bulls@#$, then it is my First Amendment right to advertise how I see fit at my place of buisness.

    Signed

    Gun Store Owner

    P.S. GFYS

    • Unfortunately, in this case, your comparison is inapposite. “Commercial speech” is a separate category from “political speech”, First Amendment-wise. Haven’t read the decision yet (thanks to Mark N’s post, I will make sure to do so), but I would be surprised if that distinction hasn’t already been trotted out.

  16. I have seen some words used in decisions, but those the judge (if I can politely call him such) used are some of the most slime-ball weasel assemblies of the English language ever uttered. Is this what CA is?

  17. I’ve seen these exact same window dressings at Blythes gun shop in Griffith,Indiana. Where’s it is normal…

  18. I say they replace the scary 1911 picture with a photoshopped image of Kamala Harris dual wielding bananas as pistols, with a big “rights violating” smile on her face.

  19. You’ve just gotta hand it to Kamala Harris. Banning storefront images of handguns (but not long guns, FWIW) reduces “emotion-driven impulse purchases” of firearms, somehow safeguarding public safety? Has Kamala no shame?

    Just once, I’d like to hear her admit that a bad gun law is a bad gun law. I mean, come on — here’s the attorney general of the most populous state in the U.S., claiming with a straight face that people who (a) can’t read a word like GUNS and need a picture, (b) are hell-bent on killing someone else or themselves, (c) aren’t stopped by the state’s completely unsupportable, unconstitutional 10-day waiting period* and (d) are unable to simply ask someone where the nearest gun store is will simply give up their quest to compromise the public safety that otherwise cradles the whole of California in its gentle caress?

    Ironically, this is a state that goes out of its way to make voting pamphlets and ballots available in something like 34 languages. I’m not sure whether one of them is pictures.

    *As Mark N pointed out above

  20. You remember when they used to do the black bars across the eyes to hide the person’s identity? Or put the black bars over the naughty-bits when the subject of the picture was naked? Maybe they should put the black bars across the photos to cover the triggers. Or maybe cover the ends of the barrels with the black bars. Add some catchy expose title to the images…. caught on film! or something.

    • What part of the pistol is legally considered to be the firearm in Cali/United States? Maybe you could put like a black censor bar over the part that’s considered the firearm. Like here in Canada the only part of the gun that is considered a firearm is the piece with the serial number on it.

  22. He should just ignore the judge and continue to advertise. If arrested he would have good cause for a lawsuit and most likely win huge monetary damages from the city and the police department’s operating budget.

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