Fresh off a court win scuttling California’s law restricting firearms purchases to one every 30 days, a gun-rights group has now set its sights on another state that limits gun purchases to one a month.
The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) has filed another lawsuit in federal court—Struck v. Platkin—this time targeting New Jersey’s version of the gun-rationing law.
In the California case, Nguyen v. Bonta, the District Court for the Southern District of California ruled such a restriction was unconstitutional. That ruling stated: “Defendants have not met their burden of producing a ‘well-established and representative historical analogue’ to the OGM law. The Court therefore concludes that Plaintiffs are entitled to summary judgment as to the constitutionality of the OGM law under the Second Amendment.”
In August, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order reversing a previously issued stay, securing the final judgment and preventing the state from enforcing the law.
In its newest lawsuit, FPC is hopeful that the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey will make a similar ruling on the New Jersey law.
“It’s been said that ‘as goes California, so goes the nation,’” Brandon Combs, FPC president, said in a recent release. “In this case, California’s ban was properly declared unconstitutional and enjoined from enforcement following years of litigation, and so it will go with all such bans throughout the United States. We will force New Jersey and every other state to abide by the Second Amendment’s protections without exception.”
In the filing, FPC argues that the word “arms” in the Second Amendment is plural, meaning lawful Americans can buy more than one gun in whatever time frame they choose.
“This case presents a simple question of law,” the lawsuit states. “The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms’—plural—‘which shall not be infringed.’”
Plaintiffs also argue that the ban doesn’t meet the second criteria required under the Bruen standard to justify laws restricting firearms ownership.
“The test that the Supreme Court applied in Heller and Bruen ‘requires courts to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding,’” the complaint states. “Under this test, the government ‘must affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.’ But New Jersey cannot carry its burden because there is no constitutionally relevant history that supports the OGM ban. Other courts to consider laws similar to New Jersey’s OGM ban have found them to be unconstitutional.”
It seems that the state of New Jersey has a tall hill to climb in trying to prove a historical precedent. Not only were multiple gun purchases per month common in early America, but there were also no historical limitations on the number of firearms that law-abiding citizens could purchase.
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