By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Cameras on every law-abiding buyer? A federal appeals court upheld California’s mandate that gun stores film and record every customer around the clock, ruling it is no search at all because the state does not hold the tapes.

The decision hands government a template for mass surveillance that dodges the Fourth Amendment: order a private business to watch you, and the Constitution never enters the room. Gun buyers are the test case. They will not be the last.

What the court held

Ninth Circuit upheld the mandate 2 to 1 in Richards v. Newsom, affirming dismissal of the challenge on the merits. The panel rejected First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment claims at once.

The law is California Penal Code Section 26806. It requires licensed firearms dealers to maintain continuous audio and video recording at least 15 frames per second, covering entrances, sales counters, and firearms displays, with a one-year retention requirement and posted “video and audio surveillance” signage.

Their logic is the alarming part. Judge Lucy Koh wrote that because the state neither installs the cameras nor accesses the footage, no government search occurs. The government now gets the surveillance without the warrant, simply by ordering someone else to run the camera.

What they’re saying

• The majority leaned on a technicality of custody. “Unable to articulate any physical intrusion or actual access of audiovisual recordings by the government, Plaintiffs instead argue that Section 26806 transforms FFLs into state actors,” Koh wrote, rejecting that argument.
• A Trump appointee dissented. Judge Kenneth Lee broke from the two-judge majority on the Fourth and First Amendment questions. Koh was appointed to the Ninth Circuit by President Biden.

The precedent

Plaintiffs are the gun-rights movement’s core. Gun Owners of America, the Gun Owners Foundation, the Second Amendment Foundation, the California Rifle and Pistol Association, and individual dealers brought the suit. They plan to seek en banc review and, if necessary, review by the Supreme Court.

This mechanism travels. Nothing in the ruling limits the workaround to firearms. A state that can compel a gun dealer to record every buyer can compel a pharmacy, a bookstore, or a house of worship to do the same, then claim it holds no tapes and conducted no search.

How it works

• The recording never stops. Section 26806 requires the cameras to run 24 hours a day, capture both audio and video, and keep the footage for a full year. Every purchase, every conversation at the counter, every face that walks in is on file.
• The split on the panel was ideological. The two judges in the majority upheld the mandate; the dissent came from the panel’s lone Republican appointee, who parted ways on the Fourth and First Amendment questions. The one judge most skeptical of the surveillance was also the only one a Republican president put on the court.
• The plaintiffs are not done. The gun-rights groups have signaled they will ask the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the case and, failing that, take it to the Supreme Court, where the custody-of-the-tapes theory would get a colder reception.

What’s in it for America

Surveillance by proxy is still surveillance. The Fourth Amendment was written to stop general searches of law-abiding people going about lawful business. A camera the state requires but pretends not to own is the general search in modern dress.

The chilling effect is the point. A citizen exercising a constitutional right, buying a lawful firearm, is now filmed and recorded by government order, the footage kept for a year. Rights exercised under a camera are rights exercised on a shorter leash.

California insists this is about tracing stolen guns and catching straw buyers, and stopping trafficking is a legitimate aim. But a free people does not accept a standing camera on every lawful transaction as the price of a right, and the fix for a technicality that guts the Fourth Amendment is a higher court willing to say so.

-The Editors

Liberty · Upstream of the Swamp · September 1, 2026

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