A federal court ruled Friday that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to buy and sell firearms.
A panel of three judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that “the right to purchase and sell firearms is part and parcel of the historically recognized right to keep and bear arms.” Writing for the majority in the case Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, a Reagan appointee, said “the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and to bear arms is not a ‘second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees that we have held to be incorporated into the Due Process Clause.’”
“If ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms’ is to have any force, the people must have a right to acquire the very firearms they are entitled to keep and to bear. One cannot truly enjoy a constitutionally protected right when the state is permitted to snuff out the means by which he exercises it.”
The case revolved around an ordinance in Alameda County, California, which banned gun stores from being located within 500 feet of a residential zone. Three businessmen—John Teixeira, Steve Nobriga, and Gary Gamaz—argued the ordinance violated their Second Amendment rights when they were prevented from opening a gun store. They claimed that the ordinance was intended to keep legal gun dealers from operating in the county.
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