The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that  the Second Amendment right to keep firearms has been expanded to protect the right to commercial weapons sales over the attempts by local municipalities to limit gun sales on their municipality.

“The Second Amendment right must also include the right to acquire a firearm,” the appeals court reasoned, in a 2-1 decision. — F.3d —-, 9th Cir.(Cal.), May 16, 2016.

The court reinstated the constitutional claim by three men, including John Teixeira, who sought to open a gun store in Alameda County, but were blocked by a zoning rule requiring gun stores be 500 feet from private homes.

Early American judges simply assumed the right to keep arms necessarily included the right to purchase them, said Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain.

“If the ‘right of the people to keep and bear arms’ is to have any force, the people must have a right to acquire the very firearms they are entitled to keep and to bear,” he wrote.

“One cannot truly enjoy a constitutionally protected right when the state is permitted to snuff out the means by which he exercises it; one cannot keep arms when the state prevents him from purchasing them,” he said.

For a Harvard Law Review article on the subject, go here.