Appeals court upholds state gun data law
A California law allowing researchers to obtain records of all guns and ammunition bought in the state does not violate gun owners’ privacy or their right to keep and bear arms, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The law, AB173, was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 but blocked in November 2022 by a San Diego judge in a privacyrights suit by gun advocacy groups. It was reinstated a year later by a state appeals court, which said the studies provide valuable information on reducing deaths and violence from firearms.
The state Supreme Court denied review of the case, but five gun owners filed suit in federal court, keeping their names confidential and claiming disclosure of their biographical information to researchers would violate their rights. A federal judge disagreed, and was upheld Wednesday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The information sent to researchers is basically the same “biographical data” that gun purchasers must provide to the dealers, the court said — name, address, phone number, birthplace, gender and occupation, the court said. It can also include any records of criminal convictions and mental health treatment. The judges noted that the law requires the researchers to keep personal information confidential.
Past rulings have rejected requirements to provide researchers with highly personal information, such as medical records related to abortion, but “there is no legitimate expectation of privacy in information that is not highly personal,” Judge Mary Schroeder wrote in the 3-0 ruling.
In this case, she said, “there was no promise of confidentiality, the information was not highly personal, and there were significant protections against public disclosure.” Long before passage of the 2021 law, Schroeder noted, the state had provided similar information about gun buyers to other public officials for law enforcement purposes, without any legal challenges.
And Schroeder said the state law does not violate the Constitution’s Second Amendment because it does not affect the gun owners’ “ability to purchase, keep, carry, or utilize firearms.”
Schroeder, appointed to the court by President Jimmy Carter, was joined by Judges Patrick Bumatay, appointed by President Donald Trump, and Salvador Mendoza, an appointee of President Joe Biden.
The ruling is “a significant victory in our endeavor to curb gun violence in California,” Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office defended the law, said in a statement. He said the information provided by the law “enables groundbreaking research that supports informed policymaking aimed at reducing and preventing firearm violence and saving lives.”
Lawyers for the gun owners could not be reached for comment. They could ask the full appeals court to order a new hearing before a larger panel.
AB173 requires the state attorney general’s office, which receives the information from gun dealers, to share it with researchers at UC Davis, whose Firearm Violence Research Center was established by the Legislature to study gun violence and assist lawmakers. The state also provides the data to researchers at Stanford University. They are among the few institutions nationwide to conduct such reviews since Congress banned federal funding of gun research in 1996.