By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The Goldwater Institute has filed an amicus brief with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, urging a full en banc re-hearing in the case of Richards v. Newsom, which challenges a section of the California Penal Code that became effective Jan. 1, 2024 requiring federally licensed firearms dealers to maintain a digital surveillance system operating 24/7/365 to record conversations and transactions with clients.
A three-judge panel dismissed the case, which was brought in December 2023 by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), Gun Owners of America (GOA), Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of California (GOC), and California Rifle & Pistol Association (CRPA).
The Goldwater Institute describes itself as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy and research foundation established in 1988, dedicated to advancing the principles of limited government, economic freedom, and individual liberty.”
Requiring the retention of recordings such as those mandated by California Penal Code § 26806 amounts to what Goldwater describes as “an unprecedented invasion of privacy.”
At the time the lawsuit was filed, SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut stated, “The state is imposing Orwellian tactics to literally view and overhear private conversations of anyone who walks into a gun shop or visits a gun show, or the home of a residence-based licensed firearms dealer. That is a violation of privacy to which no person exercising any other civil right would ever be subjected.”
SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb observed, “Requiring firearms retailers to video record their transactions is not only an egregious violation of privacy, it involves an expense that is both cost-prohibitive, and could literally drive small dealers out of business. In addition, it would be impossible to record such transactions at gun shows, because at such events, dealers are merely vendors, operating in a large facility where such equipment would be impossible to install.”
Ryan Mills, Goldwater Institute media relations manager, told TGM via email, “The government has no business forcing you to install cameras and microphones in your home office to record your conversations with clients, coworkers and family, and to maintain those recordings in case government agents want to review them. But that’s exactly what the California government requires home-based firearms dealers to do.
“That is an unprecedented invasion of privacy,” he continued, “which is why the Goldwater Institute is now urging the full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to step in and protect the First and Fourth amendment rights of California home-based businesses.”
“The constitutional injury begins when the state orders the cameras and microphones turned on—not merely when a bureaucrat presses play,” Goldwater Institute Senior Attorney Anthony Napolitano said.
