A public records request submitted three weeks into California's new ammunition background check system shows that the new infringement on Second Amendment rights is working as designed—preventing thousands of law-abiding citizens from purchasing ammo for their firearms.
To review, I requested the following information from California's Department of Justice:
From July 1, 2019 through July 22, 2019:
How many requests to purchase ammunition were made through the AFS match system? How many were denied?
How many requests to purchase ammunition were made through the Basic Ammunition Eligibility Check (Single Transaction of Purchase) System? How many were denied?
How many requests to purchase ammunition were made as part of a firearm transaction (aka a "Firearms Eligibility Check)? How many were denied?
How many requests to purchase ammunition were made as by verification of a COE (aka the "COE Verification Process")? How many were denied?
While I asked for the first three weeks of data because that was when the preliminary hearing on the Rhode v. Becerra lawsuit was scheduled, the DOJ provided data based upon that first month.
For those undergoing the standard ammunition eligibility check, 18.8% were turned down. For those using the Certificate of Eligibility option, the rejection rate was 12.7%.
In short, the California DOJ rejected nearly 11,000 ammunition purchases during the month of July not because they believe the individual to be a felon or someone else who's not allowed to have a firearm or ammunition, but simply because their data doesn't match up perfectly with a state database.
How the DOJ can defend this in court is going to be a big question mark. The law as passed by the state legislature does not require the state database match that the DOJ has implemented. By implementing that requirement, they are preventing thousands of Californians that they have no reason to believe are legally prevented from buying ammunition from purchasing it.
You can find the complete letter in PDF format here:
Cal DOJ PRR AmmoBackgroundChecks by Matthew Hoy on Scribd
