calguns gun store window advertising
courtesy calguns.org

From the Second Amendment Foundation

Attorneys for the Second Amendment Foundation and several partners have filed a federal lawsuit for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief in a case challenging the constitutionality of a California law prohibiting gun shops, sporting goods stores, and any “firearm industry member” from advertising, marketing or arranging for placement “any firearm-related product in a manner that is designed, intended, or reasonably appears to be attractive to minors.”

It is a First Amendment case known as Junior Sports Magazine, Inc., et al, v. Bonta. Joining SAF in the motion are the California Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., the CRPA Foundation, Gun Owners of California, Turner’s Outdoors, Inc., California Youth Shooting Sports Foundation, Redlands California Youth Clay Shooting Sports, Inc., and two private citizens.

The statute in question—identified as AB 2571 throughout the complaint and signed into law June 30—clearly focuses on any “firearm industry member” in its prohibition, which violates not only the First Amendment, but also the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, plaintiffs contend.

“The First Amendment protects commercial speech that promotes legal products and services,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “You simply cannot single out people engaged in a legal business enterprise and forbid them from advertising or promoting their products just because you don’t like them. That’s what this case is all about.”

While the law prohibits pro-gun advertising and display, the suit notes, “AB 2571 does not, however, prohibit anti-gun organizations not ‘formed for the express purpose of promoting, encouraging, or advocating for the purchase, use, or ownership of firearm-related products,’ like Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Gun Free Kids, and Everytown for Gun Safety, from offering and soliciting youth memberships or using branded merchandise, like hats, t-shirts, stuffed animals, coloring and activity books, stickers, pins, and buttons, bearing anti-gun messages and slogans—or even images of unlawful firearms—to spread their political messages, promote their organizations, or solicit memberships and/or financial support.”

“It’s clearly a double standard codified into law that cannot be allowed to stand,” Gottlieb said. “We’re determined to see that it doesn’t.”

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39 COMMENTS

  1. “any firearm-related product in a manner that is designed, intended, or reasonably appears to be attractive to minors.”

    Could that be anymore broadly worded? Screw these clowns and put your ads up then take it to the Supreme Court.

    • Make no mistake about it…The Gun Control democRat Party views Gun Owners the same way they viewed Black Americans. The democRat Party simply erased their beloved Jim Crow N-word and inserted, “Gun Owner.”

      • Debbie you have posted the truth about how gun control laws were racist in their inception. I would put up a huge ad with a black man and woman holding an AR15 and a 1911 with the words Come and Take Them in huge letters just baiting these bastards to call them racist. Fuck Bonta, he’s as big a prick as Becerra ever was.

        • They’ve called any and all black conservatives racist, and any other name you can think of. Clarence Thomas is the best example of that. They don’t care, because the media never call them on it.

        • Don’t let these pricks take a breath without knowing we are ready to fight Gipper!

        • Muckraker, your ad should include the words “Hey, democrats… ” preceding the words “Come and Take Them”. Make it personal.

      • they want to use a precedent…when was the last time you saw and ad for cigarettes?

      • “the same way they viewed Black Americans.”

        Fixed that for you. Despite what they would have you believe, (D) is still the party of racism.

  2. Spaghetti thrown on the wall. That’s all our CA Dems do…throw as many ludicrous and obviously unconstitutional (many have been declared so by judges over the years) bills into the hopper to see some of them signed into law and frustrate conservatives and gun owners.

    Three thrown up on the wall, two declared unconstitutional upon challenge, and voila! they’ve advanced their agenda by one that sticks and serves as precedent for the next salvo.

    • California liberals are as intolerant and racist as any racist historical figure in American history. They project their own racism and intolerance on to other people and institutions. Having been born and raised in Northern California, I saw the “Free Speech battles” at UC Berkeley. And the truth is the Left has never supported the First Amendment.

      But they do support burning crosses. They support pornography. And none of those things are what the first amendment is about. But you can certainly do and have those things. Just as the second amendment has nothing to do with hunting. But you can certainly go hunting.

  3. A lot of people have said “If I were president I would…..”

    But face it, do you really want to be president and spend four years dealing with democrats?

    Joe is probably tired of it too in a way because they keep him from getting his ice cream on time, wake him up when he falls out of the chair, and forget to let him know what he said 10 minutes ago. The first president in the oval office that will one day yell out “Help! I’ve fallen and can’t get up!” and mean it, if he remembers to yell that.

  4. California has been down this road before. I don’t remember now whether it was a county ordinance or a state statute, but it was a law that prohibited posting images of handguns on the exterior of a gun shop. It was challenged on first amendment grounds and found to be unconstitutional. This statute is even more offensive because in effect it bans all gun advertising anywhere simply because that advertising, no matter what it says, would be attractive to minors.

    Moreover, I see these plaintiff’s attorneys who are now arguing about how industry advertising is attracti9ve to young men and promotes gun violence. Personally I don’t see it–I don’t look at ads..

    • I agree. I just don’t see Winchester, Colt, Smith & Wesson, or any of them sitting around in an advertisement meeting saying: “How can we make this more attractive to corner the Psychopath Market?”

      I’m sure the Liberals think that, but then, they are the Psychopath Market.

      • “……….don’t know if they’ll let me board without a mask and COVID passport”. 🤔

        • “Country roads, take me home, to the place… “. Sorry, I’ll stop now. Yes, I know the way out, thank you.

    • “When the leaves are brown…
      You can smoke them that way…”

      🤣🤣🤣🤣

  6. The obvious purpose of this “law” is to restore their ability to engage in lawfare against manufacturers like they did against Remington in Connecticut. They used their advertising “law” to make an end run around the PLCAA.

  7. Contrast Commiefornia to Indiana>God’s country. Some of my favorite gunshops have billboards up that can be seen off I-80 like Blythes,Westforth & Cabelas. Sue the he!! out of Commiefornia!

    • So you made the trek to the hoosier state? If you did FWW congrats. I lived there until I was 14. I love Indiana and always will. God’s country indeed. Jim Nabors wasn’t a native but an adopted son and it was awesome to hear him sing Back Home Again in Indiana.

    • PSA advertises on the TV here. They have their Greenville, SC store right up the road from me. I was last in there during the ‘lock-downs’ and they were sold out of almost everything.

  9. So, will Hollywood be prohibited from advertising shoot-em-up movies that appeal to minors? Those movies do, afterall. Make gun ownership and gun usage look cool.

  10. Cigarette advertising has been banned from TV for decades, and possibly other places as well. Either that was never challenged, or it was and was found to be Constitutional.

    • At midnight on January 2, 1971, The “Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act” went into effect. It banned cigarette advertising on TV and radio.

      On New Year’s night, 1971, on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson…. At 11:59 Johnny went to a commercial break. In that 1 minute before midnight the very last cigarette advertising on US TV happened, it was a 1 minute commercial for Virginia Slims cigarettes.

      Cigarette advertising was banned because cigarettes are dangerous to the smokers and the people around them.

      California will probably bring that up. But there are lots or reasons why its not applicable in the case of gun advertising – but one is there is no constitutional allowance for banning advertisement for a product the people have a an enumerated constitutional right to have. No one had an enumerated constitutional right to have and use cigarettes.

  11. Amazing how you can advertise sez toys in San Francisco. But you can’t advertise guns??? That’s how a California liberal looks at the First Amendment. I remember watching sporting goods stores advertise the fact, they had firearms for sale in TV ads. Back in the early 1970s. But then they stopped. Now I know why.

    Right here in Kentucky and Tennessee newspapers have advertising inserts for AR-15 rifles. And every other firearm made. It’s wonderful to live in a free state.

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