A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit just heard oral arguments in the high-stakes en banc rehearing of *Rhode v. Bonta*, where California’s draconian ammunition background check regime hangs in the balance. If you blinked, here’s the rewind: back in July 2025, that same panel wisely applied the Supreme Court’s *Bruen* text-and-history test to gut the Golden State’s requirement for point-of-sale NICS checks on every ammo purchase—a scheme that’s already cost law-abiding Californians millions in fees and endless delays since it kicked in around 2019. California, predictably allergic to Second Amendment wins, begged for the full court’s review, got it, and kept the checks locked in via stay. The Firearm Blog flagged the en banc grant last December, and now we’re at crunch time with judges grilling both sides on whether this modern bureaucratic hurdle aligns with the Founding era’s freewheeling ammo markets.
What’s clever about this fight? California’s defenders are scrambling to paint ammo checks as a “reasonable” evolution of 18th-century powder house regulations or merchant discretion—feeble analogies that crumble under *Bruen*’s microscope, where history shows no government-mandated background snooping on mundane purchases like lead and brass. The state’s real ace? Pointing to rising “gun violence” stats, but as we 2A folks know, that’s a red herring when criminals don’t line up for paperwork anyway. Critics like the CRPA and Second Amendment Foundation are hammering home the Second Amendment’s plain text: the right to keep and bear arms implies keeping them fed, without Big Brother’s permission slip every trigger pull. Oral args revealed panel skepticism—hints of originalist leanings from judges like Collins and VanDyke suggest the panel might not rubber-stamp Sacramento’s nanny-state nonsense.
For the 2A community, the implications are electric: a win here torches not just California’s ammo tax, but ripples nationwide, kneecapping similar schemes in New York, New Jersey, and beyond. It’s *Bruen*’s next battlefield, testing if post-2022 courts will enforce history over hysteria. Stay locked in—TFB and I’ll track the ruling, but don’t hold your breath for California to comply without a Supreme Court smackdown. Arm up, train hard, and keep the pressure on.
