Gun rationing is an irrationally popular restriction among anti-gunners for some ridiculous reason. They seem to think that it somehow dissuades straw buys, though straw buyers are generally not doing this as a primary means of creating revenue. Most are friends of the prohibited person who is just doing them a favor. Others are doing a bit here and there for the gun trafficker who often is smart enough not to buy a gun himself.

Either way, there's never been any real evidence that gun rationing does a damn thing, especially since most criminals are using stolen guns.

So it's no surprise that there's a challenge to California's gun rationing scheme. What's surprising is how the Ninth Circuit is reacting to the so-called arguments presented by the state.

“Do arms traffickers buy two at a time?,” asked U.S. Circuit Judge Danielle Forrest. “It seems like no.”

According to Yen, the law is a regulation on when you can own a gun, not if you can do so. But that argument didn’t sit well with Judge Forrest, either.

“It would be absurd to think that a government could say you can only buy one book a month because we want to make sure that you really understand the books you read, or you could only attend one protest a month because, you know, there’s some societal drawbacks from having protests so we want to kind of space those out. People would say that’s absurd,” Forrest said during the proceeding. 

Judge John Owens further tore into Yen’s reasoning on one-gun-a-month law by using the scenario of a liquor store owner who might be threatened by a gang both at his business and his home. If the owner wanted two guns but didn’t have any, he would have to buy one, then wait 30 days to buy another. And Owens believes in that case the law would keep him from defending himself under the Second Amendment.

That's right. Neither of these is "Saint" Benitez, who has made his name in defending the Second Amendment over and over again.

These are other judges who are looking at the arguments being presented as absolutely insane, and for good reason.

Now, I could go into gun rationing and why the whole thing is stupid, but the ruling has been made and the law is stayed, as Cam pointed out earlier this week, along with some other questions and comments from the judges on the panel.

What's interesting to me, though, is how the Ninth Circuit, which was long held as the most hostile circuit to the Second Amendment, isn't so hostile anymore. These are all reasonable points, both in the quote above and in Cam's earlier piece.

So what gives?

Part of that is that even if the judges are personally hostile toward the Second Amendment, the Bruen decision lowered the boom on a lot of that. They have to have precedence from those earlier periods with regard to existing laws that restrict gun rights. Those are hard to come by and the few that do exist were terribly bigoted. They can only do so much.

Yet these questions and comments we've seen from the judges actually don't sound like the kind of thing someone asks if they're only going along with the gun rights argument because their hands are tied. These actually sound like the kind of questions pro-gun judges might ask.

I'm not entirely sure what the deal is, but I'm glad to see it. Gun owners in California have deserved better than they've gotten from their state.