California’s new background check requirements for ammunition purchases appear to be stopping far more legal gun owners than prohibited purchasers, according to the Sacramento Bee.
The Bee reported Wednesday that numbers from the state’s Department of Justice show that nearly 1 in 5 attempted ammunition purchases were rejected by state authorities between July 1 and November.
California’s ammo background check law went into effect at the beginning of July. The California Department of Justice administers the program, which cost buyers an extra $1 on top of the cost of their purchase and requires store clerks to check purchaser information against two different databases. The measure was passed by a California voters in 2016 as Proposition 63. The California Department of Justice lists the requirements for ammunition purchase eligibility on its website.
In total, more than 345,000 ammunition background checks were performed in the July-November time frame, according to the figures, but only 101 of those checks flagged someone legally prohibited from buying ammunition. Outside of those prohibited purchasers, there were another 62,000 purchasers who were turned away because the information on their I.D. cards didn’t match what was in the state’s system or hadn’t been entered into it. – READ MORE