« A hard hitting pic | Main | A novel form of political theater »

CalGuns wins case striking down advertising ban

Ruling here. California had a ban on gun shops having images of guns visible from the outside. A shop can have the word "gun" visible but not a picture of one. It was a strange rule, first found in the Uniform Firearms Act of the 1920s, as I recall. (I think it also required any firearms sold to be "securely wrapped" before they left the premises). The reason was never clear to me -- perhaps the thought that people would be upset if they thought that a gun store was selling guns?

The court struck down the provision on First Amendment grounds. The best rationale the state could come up with was that seeing a picture of a gun might cause suicides. Not even close to the argument required to regulate commercial speech....